this is how it starts
by Sadie Lane
Summary: The Winx girls can't seem to get a jump on a new enemy assaulting Magix, so three strong new fairies stepping up should be like a gift, right? Except that they're not quite working under the same morals and ethics code, and what ARE their motives, anyway?
1. Dawn the Face of a New Generation

Disclaimer: This is an unauthorized derivative of Winx Club, a Rainbow S.p.A. production. I do not own Winx Club or any associated characters, plots, or settings. The previous disclaimer applies to this and all future chapters of this story.

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**dawn the face of a new generation**

Stella drew in a wondrous breath. "Oh, _girls_! It's…it's perfect!"

Aisha rolled her eyes as Stella salivated over the latest extravagant display in the front windows of the latest trendy fashion focal point at the heart of Magix. Apparently "blue was the new black!"

"Perfect for what?" Flora asked, pressing her palm to the window. Stella just grinned excitedly.

"Perfect for me, of course!" she gushed, rushing to push through the doors and jostling the four shopping bags she already had in her arms. "Alfea's next term starts the day after tomorrow and if we're going to be teaching, I'll need a _fabulous_ new wardrobe!" Bloom stepped forward to hold the doors open for her, trying not to laugh.

"Right, because the thirty new dresses you've bought all this month won't last you through the week."

A crashing noise rattled the glass doors and cracked the display window.

"The world doesn't revolve around you, you bastard!"

The girls turned their heads in all different directions, searching for the noise and power which must have shaken the building, but couldn't find anyone; suddenly Flora gasped sharply and Musa pointed up. "There!"

"Where?"

"No, there!" Tecna pointed in the opposite direction.

"There!"

Bloom looked straight up; sure enough, a fairy was hovering above her, sparkling wings practically vibrating, they fluttered so fast. An energy blast swung at her and she seemed to vanish as it exploded into another building.

"Hey!" Bloom shouted; the fairy ignored her completely.

"You're one to judge!" called another voice, male this time. The girl, five feet away from where she had started, scoffed dismissively and opened her palms.

"I'm not the one trying to take over the _world_," she said derisively. "I'm not _that_ self-centered."

Vibrant energy swirled over her left hand; slicing her right through it, she showered the man with darts of quick-moving power. As he dodged _almost_ all of them, she appeared behind him and—Flora cried out—knocked him out of the air.

"Laura!" someone hollered; the girls looked around to the new attendant, another fairy, as the first fairy (Laura, apparently) turned her attention to the second.

"Finished?" Laura asked as a third fairy joined the second. The two new girls exchanged a sour look and Laura frowned.

"We captured Aster," she said bitterly as Laura nodded.

"Uh-huh," she said coolly. "Right, well, we'd better get going." She looked down to where the man had fallen; the Winx Club girls hadn't even noticed the third fairy move, but she appeared to be supporting him somehow. He hung beside her like a puppet on strings, snapping his bared teeth. She only glared at him. In a sudden flash of dim light, the mysterious girls and their captive vanished.

The Winx girls exchanged curious looks. "So what was _that_ about?" Stella asked, completely baffled. Bloom shrugged as Tecna started clicking away on her PDA.

"Apparently, this 'Aster' guy has been causing a lot of trouble across the magical dimension," Tecna said, furrowing her brow. "I don't know why we haven't noticed anything; seems the authorities are trying to keep it pretty closely under wraps. I guess they've only just made it to our sector."

Musa tapped her fingers against her chin and shifted her weight to one side. "Those girls seemed pretty upset that they had only captured Aster," she said ponderously. Aisha nodded.

"He probably has accomplices," she said. "If the police are trying to keep this quiet, it makes sense that there wouldn't be information about them available publicly."

Bloom leaned against the cracked storefront. "But why haven't we heard about them until now? And that was pretty weird, them just showing up here and then leaving."

"I want to know how that Laura girl kept disappearing and reappearing so quickly," Aisha said, resting her hands on her hips. "Even if she had a Believix, I didn't see her change her wings at all; she couldn't have been teleporting, and anyway it wouldn't make sense to do it over such a small space."

Flouncing into the middle of their circle, Stella brandished a fistful of bags at her friends. "Girls! Have you forgotten why we're _here_?"

Flora smiled fondly. "Shopping, of course," she said. "Maybe we should let this one slide for now. If it comes up again, we'll look into it, but it doesn't really seem to be affecting us just now."

Bloom and Tecna frowned. "I guess," Tecna said, putting her PDA back into her pocket even as Bloom made a face.

"I don't like this at all," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "Tecna, did the information you found say anything about what Aster was looking for, or what he was doing?"

Tecna shook her head. "Nothing specific. All we have to go on is what Laura said."

"That she's not trying to take over the world," Flora said. "So it doesn't seem that Aster is going after anything specific, but still, I think we should leave well enough alone for now."

Bloom made a disdainful noise through her teeth as Stella grabbed her arm, dragging her towards the department store doors. "Fine…"


	2. Riding Horses of the Sunrise

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**riding horses of the sunrise**

Bloom strutted to the front of the classroom, sitting on the edge of the desk and grinning at her students. This was so cool; after two years of student teaching, the Winx girls had each been given their own classes, and Bloom couldn't wait to get to know all her new students. Ten girls with brand new magic powers, all just waiting to learn about how to use their power; she couldn't wait.

"Hi," she said cheerfully, waving to the students as they turned to look at her. "I'm Bloom, your instructor for Beginning Combat 101." She giggled, winking. "I'm sure we'll have lots of fun and you'll all be really great in no time."

A girl in the second row raised her hand. Bloom tilted her head; she looked strangely familiar, but Bloom couldn't quite place her, the military cap on her head shadowing her features slightly. "Yes? Oh, uh, what's your name?"

"Riley," the girl eagerly said as she lowered her hand. "Will we be learning to use magic similar to your Dragon Fire?"

Bloom grinned and shook her head. "Sorry, but the Dragon Fire is my special magic. But everyone has their own special magic as well," she said with a fervent nod when Riley's face fell, "and they all have the potential to be very strong. How about we go around the room, and everyone can say what their magic is?" She pointed to a frail-looking girl with dark hair in the first row who startled at the attention.

"Um, I—um…water," she managed, sinking down into her seat. "My name is Anna." Bloom smiled encouragingly and looked at the next girl, a tall, slender blond with sharp eyes.

"Dahlia," the girl said. "Electricity." She threw her frail neighbor a dirty look and Bloom frowned.

"Now, there's no need to be competitive," she admonished. "Everyone's power has equal potential; you never know when something could throw you off balance during a fight, even if you think you have the advantage." She pointed to the next girl. "How about you?"

"Water," she said, looking around the sour girl to grin at the now utterly embarrassed Anna. "I'm Alona."

"That's another thing," Bloom said, pausing the line. "Many people have magic based in similar, or the same elemental source. That's perfectly okay; a lot of people in the same dimension have the same magic power, it doesn't make you any less magical or powerful." She glanced up and grinned. "Riley, how about you?"

Riley froze, instantly becoming a deer in the headlights as the class's attention turned to her. "Um…"

"Don't be shy," Bloom urged. "It's okay, everyone's power is equal here."

"I…"

Dahlia rolled her eyes and slumped down in her chair. "Is it going to take this long for _everyone_ to go? Class'll be over before she's even got the words out!"

Bloom frowned, watching as Alona glared at Dahlia and Anna turned to look away. That wasn't right at all; she knew some fairies could be self-centered or egotistical at times, but she hadn't met any who were consistently mean or threatening. Could she be a witch in disguise? Some kind of plot to infiltrate Alfea College? Was Cloud Tower up to its old tricks?

She shook her head. No, that was silly; that was downright stupid. She was being paranoid. The Trix were in Oblivion and Headmistress Griffin would never launch an attack. At least, not anymore. This girl just needed to learn some manners; she was probably just immature.

"Now, now," Bloom said with the barest hint of ice in her tone, "let's not speak down to one another. Riley, do you want to be skipped?"

"Yes ma'am," she said instantly, straightening her back and leaning forward just an inch. Bloom nodded.

"I'd like to speak to you after class," she said in what she hoped was a kind voice. "So, next?"

"Kayla," the next girl said proudly. "My power is fire."

"Tania, my power source is metal," the next girl jumped in before she was even called on. Bloom grinned. A metal talent was unusual; the girl must have come from far away. At the other end of the row, Riley grinned and made a small appreciative noise, attracting Bloom's attention.

The remaining girls must have named their powers, but Bloom found herself distracted by Riley's intense expression. Why hadn't the girl named her power? It wasn't an especially personal question, and she certainly looked _intelligent_; was she afraid her power was too weak? Too uninteresting? Too common? Tania's metal magic had sparked her interest; maybe she was a metal fairy as well.

"Uh, right," she said as the last girl finished speaking. Bloom hadn't really planned this far into her lesson. "Let's…go outside and do a practical!"

The girls exchanged alternately perplexed and excited expressions as they stood to leave; Riley was the last to go, apparently trying not to interact with any of the other students. It was a little early in the semester to be showing favoritism or giving any of her students any form of extra help, but Bloom felt strangely drawn to the eager, shy young girl. Hanging back, she laid her hand on Riley's shoulder and walked beside her.

"Do you know your own energy source?" she asked quietly as it suddenly occurred to her that Riley might even be in the same position she had been at her first day at Alfea: unable to transform and limited in access to her own magic. That would definitely explain why Riley had been so excited at the prospect of learning a specific type of magic, such as Dragon Fire. Riley blushed darkly and looked away, pulling down the brim of her cap, but didn't speak.

"Kind of," she said shiftily. Bloom nodded, beginning to understand.

"Well, it's okay," she said, patting Riley's back. "We'll figure it out, and I can help you with whatever you need." She laughed lightly. "I can be a friend too, not just a teacher!"

"Thank you," Riley said, still looking aside as they reached the courtyard where the other girls had lined up to wait for Bloom. The fire fairy took her place before the class, looking away from Riley with some effort.

"All right, ladies!" she said. "Everyone transform!"

The girls looked at her, bewildered, and then at each other. Alona raised her hand skeptically.

"You mean…into our fairy forms?" she asked. Bloom nodded, grinning widely. The girls looked around at each other again; no one wanted to go first. Finally Riley stepped forward, fluttering her wings, and everyone else stepped away. Bloom's eyes widened; she hadn't even noticed the girl transform.

"Yes ma'am," she said obediently, standing completely still. Bloom was reminded of every movie she had ever seen about the military. Somewhat hesitantly, the other girls stepped up and transformed as well with varying amounts of flair and flashing light. When ten young fairies stood before her, ranging from awkward and uncomfortable (Anna) to proud and disdainful (Dahlia), Bloom nodded and put her hands out in front of her.

"Everyone copy me," she said. "We're going to summon some basic magic. No spells, just…draw your power from within."

Anna and Alona stepped close to one another and closed their eyes; Kayla bit her lip nervously, her eyes darting back and forth between Bloom and her own open palms. Unsurprisingly, all the girls managed to summon at least a flare of magic energy, but Bloom was surprised when she got down the line to Riley. The girl's energy was all over the place, flaring out left and right as she appeared to strain herself trying to control it, biting her lip and pressing her other hand to her forehead.

"Whoa, whoa," Bloom said, cupping her hands around the sparking mess. "Calm down, it's okay. Let it go."

Riley heaved a labored sigh as she clenched her fist, the energy vanishing. Maybe _that_ was why she had been so hesitant to reveal her power source; whatever it was, it was hard to control. Or maybe Riley was just very poor at it? Bloom smiled gently, identifying with the poor girl's hardship as she recalled her own first year at Alfea.

"Don't worry about it," she whispered. "I want to talk to you after class, but just work on trying to control your power for now."

Riley nodded, blinking away what might have been tears.

"Okay!" Bloom called out to the other girls, straightening up and pacing before them. "Now, everyone…group yourselves according to your power types. Anna, Alona, you girls stand together; Dahlia and Tania, why don't you two pair up as well, and then Kayla, Vienna, Cornelia, you all can work together, and Monna and Samantha, why don't you two work together as well." As the girls grouped off, Bloom stepped closer to Riley, intending to do her best to figure out this girl's mysteriously unnamed power. "Okay, so, you're all paired with someone with a similar power source to your own; practice working together. Don't try to combine your powers, that could get dangerous, but play off each other, see what you can find out."

Riley looked up at her nervously, toeing the ground. "I'm sorry ma'am," she said stiffly. "I know I'm not very good, I don't belong in such a high-caliber class."

"What?" Bloom shook her head. "Please don't say that about yourself, much less think it. Didn't you hear what I said? Everyone has the potential to be great. It just takes practice."

"I suppose," Riley said sheepishly, finally looking up. "I just… I guess I don't work as well as I could outside of my comfort zone. With my friends, that is. But they're in different classes, so I feel like I'm all alone."

Slinging an arm around her shoulders, Bloom led Riley a few feet away from the rest of the class and sat her on the ground. "Friends are so, so important," Bloom said seriously. "Never give up what they can give you. But you need to be able to fight on your own as well, and to be able to make friends with new people. You can't risk blowing up a building every time you have to fight alone just because you need the support your friends give you to be in your face all the time."

Riley combed her fingers through the grass and shrugged. Ducking her head slightly, Bloom tried to look into her eyes. "I guess," Riley said quietly. "They've just always been there for me, through everything I've ever gone through. It's hard to be alone."

"You're not alone," Bloom insisted, shaking her head and beating back the urge to tip Riley's head up and force eye contact. "I told you, I'm here to help you whenever you need it, no matter what. And I'm sure some of the girls around here would love to be friends with you if you just talked to them." Bloom sighed, looking up at the sky. "And besides. You're a strong girl; I saw it in you right from the start, when you asked me about my Dragon Fire. You can fight on your own if you need to, and even if you do, your friends' love and support are always all around you."

Riley cleared her throat and shifted to a kneeling position, looking out across the field at the other girls. Bloom swung her legs around to stand, offering Riley a hand up, which she hesitated to take. "I know," she said. "I really do. I just have to try harder."

"That's the spirit!" Bloom said, grinning. "You can do it."

Standing, Riley brushed the grass stains off her knees and set her expression determinedly. "I can."

If Bloom noticed the cold certainty in her tone, she chose to ignore it.


	3. The Time Belongs to Us

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**the time belongs to us  
**

Dawdling outside her classroom, Musa tapped a tentative beat along her arm as she debated the best way to get her class's attention. She planned to begin the class by discussing recent events—the Trix invasion of Alfea, Valtor's invasion of the realm of Magix, the Black Circle's attempt to wipe out all fairies—but it was hard to impart all the emotions she had felt as a part of the fight to students who may have been completely unaware of any of them.

She shook her head and rapped her knuckles against her skull. Whatever. Best to plunge in headfirst and just…see what happened. Setting herself determinedly, she banged open the door and sauntered to the front of the room as her students jumped at the loud noise.

"Hey," she said cheerfully. "I'm Musa, your teacher for this modern history course. First of all, does anyone have any issues that they wanted to discuss before we get into my lesson plan?" Lesson plan, what a weird thing to say. Musa had spent her school years ignoring lesson plans, taking knowledge as it came at her; even as a student teacher, she had played most lessons by ear. To be on the other side of the fence and have control over the class—and thereby the students—was weirdly exhilarating.

A tall, slender girl with sharp cat-eyes in the back row raised her hand. Musa grinned; this was easier than she had expected.

"Yes? What's your name?"

The girl lowered her arm and paused for a moment, folding her hands on her desk. "My name is Allison," she said, her voice crisp but quiet. "Are we to be studying current events as well as recent history?"

"Uh…" It hadn't really crossed Musa's mind to cover anything other than the wars and fights she knew about firsthand, but come to think of it, there was a lot more to Magix history than battle. "Yeah, we'll get to it," she assured the girl. She seemed appeased, nodding and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome," Musa said with a wide smile. If all her students were this polite, this calm, this submissive, the class would be a breeze. Another girl raised her hand and Musa pointed to her.

"Dana," she said dismissively as she lowered her hand. "Are we going to be doing any historical reenactments?"

Okay, so forget that bit about all the students being polite little knowledge machines. Musa stifled a giggle and shook her head. "I don't think so. The battles I'll be telling you about are all very violent and it would be pretty irresponsible of me to try to recreate them."

Dana frowned and looked away. Great, a pouty teenager. Musa sighed.

"Okay, so we'll get right into it, I guess. I'll start with the fight against the Trix; who can tell me who they were? Are?"

No one raised her hand, and Musa nodded, settling herself on top of the table.

"M'kay, I kind of figured this might happen. Have any of your ever heard of Icy? Darcy? Stormy?"

Recognition dawned on a few of their faces as others only grew more perplexed; Allison was the only one to remain completely impassive, leading Musa to divide the class roughly in half in terms of who knew of the Trix and who didn't (plus one "other"). Facing the blackboard behind her, Musa zapped up a picture of the Trix in their usual obnoxious glory, grimacing smiles and all.

"Icy," she pointed to the suave witch at the front, "Darcy, and Stormy. Three really nasty witches, you don't want to get on their bad side, that's for sure. Now who can tell me what a catalyst is?"

The class progressed uneventfully; with the exception of Allison, whose expression never changed, all the girls grew more interested and asked more questions as Musa moved on to each subsequent battle. By the end of the period, they had covered half of the battle against the Black Circle, which was taking longer because Musa had to give a sketchy description of the power of Believix magic. Of course, all the girls wanted to know as much as possible about the fairy form, but Musa refused to tell them too much; that wasn't her job, and as it was difficult and very circumstantial magic, she didn't want to get their hopes up that they would be able to earn it.

The girls gathered their bags, gossiping to one another and talking, Musa noted happily, about the lesson that had just had. In the back, Allison slid a notebook into her bag and walked towards the door, head held high. Musa watched her carefully; something was off about this girl. She hadn't spoken once after her initial question, but her eyes had a certain intelligence in them that made it appear as though she could see everything going on at all times.

"Allison," Musa called out spontaneously. The girl stopped and turned to face her, stepping out of the way of the student traffic.

"Yes ma'am?"

Musa frowned. She was terribly polite, but…something about her. "Allison," she started, not really sure where she was planning to go. "Where are you from?"

The girl was almost infuriatingly placid about…_everything_. "Tempero," she said softly, her eyes weirdly cold. Musa nodded; she had never heard of Tempero, but she wasn't going to let Allison know that. It was probably just far away; she could ask Tecna to look it up later, or she could do it herself.

"I see," she said, putting on a bit of a show. What was she expecting, for this girl to suddenly burst into tears and wail about homesickness? Not likely. "Do you have any friends here from home?"

Allison smiled at that, a small shadow of a thing, and shook her head. "No," she said. Musa suddenly realized that despite her student's quiet mannerism, she never had any trouble hearing her.

"Do you have any friends here at all?" Musa asked before she could stop herself. Allison's smile vanished in less than an instant. "I'm sorry," Musa blurted, "it's none of my business, you can—you can go, if you like."

"Thank you, ma'am," Allison replied, her voice sharper than before. She walked with something close to a glide, her poise exuding a typical combination of self-confidence and standoffishness. Musa frowned, sitting back on the table as she rested her elbows on her knees. She had no reason to feel threatened by a student, much less a first-year, but something about this girl…

Out of the corner of her eye, Musa saw a wild flash of light. Crap—Allison wasn't a sociopath or something, was she? She hadn't just gone to burn off steam, had she? No, no, no—

Wait.

Bloom was standing beside another first-year, helping her control a flaring ball of magical energy. Breathing a sigh of relief, Musa jogged out of her classroom to meet Bloom on the field after her class was finished; watching the first-years try to use their magic was always interesting, and these girls weren't too bad. Some confidence issues, it looked like, but they had all managed to get a little something, which was more than could be said for some.

As she watched, Bloom took the girl with the badly-controlled energy aside and sat her down to talk, probably about her wild magic. The girl looked shy and embarrassed, which was unsurprising. Musa saw Bloom stand to leave, offering the girl her hand—ultimately accepted, but only after a long pause—and, watching closely, Musa saw the girl throw her shoulders back defiantly, her expression set to fierce determination. Bloom must've really gotten to her.

Or something.


	4. The Faces Change in the Same Old Places

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**the faces change in the same old places**

Resting her chin on her folded hands, Flora sighed and opened her eyes. Teaching was wonderful every day, of course; being able to impart some of her knowledge or, even better, some of her appreciation and love for nature and the world around her to other young fairies was amazing and gratifying. But she couldn't help thinking about the concerns Bloom and Musa kept raising about two of their students. Bloom, naturally, was concerned about the only girl in her class who hadn't shown a level of improvement anywhere _near_ the others ("Is there something wrong with her? Is there something wrong with _me_?" Bloom fretted), and Musa couldn't stop trying to come up with _some way_ to get this weird, quiet girl to speak up (as Musa kept insisting, "I _know_ she's really smart, she's just so…" but the thought was never finished). It was enough to make Flora wish one, or both of the girls would take her class so she could see them for herself.

Flora frowned. There was _that girl_ again, jogging across the quad. She had shown up at the beginning of the semester with all the other first-years looking as nervous and excited as any of them, and, as best Flora and the girls could tell, signed up for as many classes as she needed and more—but not been to a single one. It was the strangest thing that no one seemed to be able to figure out; she got all her work turned in, took every test, and knew all the information one would expect, but no one could ever recall having actually seen her in a classroom.

According to school records, which the girls had gained access to this year (_finally_) as official teachers, her name was Lola and she was from a planet called Conticeo. According to Stella, who made it a habit to give students fashion advice on as regular a basis as she could manage, it was utterly unfair that the girl always managed to look like she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Aisha raved about her athletic prowess and Musa complained about how pop-rock all her music was, but no one had been able to gather any really useful information about her and as far as Flora knew, none of them had ever actually spoken to her. In fact, Flora wasn't sure she had ever seen Lola speak to any other students, either. Bloom and Musa should introduce her to their problematic girls, she thought wryly, maybe they could all work each other out.

"Hey, Flora!"

The flower fairy perked up and grinned at Aisha, walking in and sitting on the table. "Aisha," she said, grateful to have something to distract her from thinking about problematic students. "How were your classes today?"

Aisha threw up her hands and threw her head back melodramatically, squeezing her eyes shut. "None of these girls understand the delicate balance between being able to fly like a kid and being able to fly like a real fairy!"

Flora giggled. "Having trouble with the back flips?"

"It's not like they're _hard_!"

"Well, these girls are new to it, give them time," Flora tried to reassure her friend. "Anything else weighing you down?"

Aisha straightened up and slid off the desk, turning to rest her forearms on it and face Flora eye-to-eye. "Have you been thinking at all about these students Bloom and Musa have been telling us about?"

Flora barely kept from groaning her frustration and burying her head in her hands. "A little," she said instead. "I try not to; I don't want to get in their way, I mean. Why do you ask?"

"I…" Aisha shook her head and sighed. "I don't know. Something about this doesn't seem quite right to me. I mean, the girl in Bloom's class with all those problems, and then the girl in Musa's class who just seems to know everything—I mean, Musa's said she gets full marks on just about everything, but she never talks!" She stood up, hand on her hip. "And that girl from where is it, Conticeo, who keeps roaming campus all the time, what's with her? Have any of us ever seen her in any classes? Ever?"

Flora shook her head. "I don't think so. I haven't seen her really interact with any students either, though, she doesn't seem to spend a whole lot of time on campus." She cocked her head thoughtfully, drumming her fingers on the table. "Do you know where she lives?"

"We could find out," Aisha said, leaning forward. "We ought to visit her, make sure she's doing all right on her own."

"You motives seem less than pure," Flora joked. Truthfully, she was curious about this mysterious girl; she had to have roommates, and it would probably be interesting to get their take on her situation (if she even had one).

Aisha's grin was deviously bright. "Let's get Tecna."

---

"Certainly not!"

"What d'you mean, 'no'?"

Flora ran her hand through her bangs and closed her eyes. This wouldn't devolve into a fight; it was nowhere near that important. But under the current circumstances—they were all tense and tired from handling their own classes and they were having trouble figuring out the appropriate amount of work to give students such that they didn't have to spend all their free time grading—Aisha might be highly strung enough to blow it out of proportion. "Girls," she said, calmly as she could manage, "let's think about this for a moment. Tecna, we're not going to break into this poor girl's room; we just want to know where she lives. Aisha, we can find this information out in other ways if Tecna doesn't want to get involved."

"Hey now," Tecna said, putting her hand up. "I never said that. You haven't even told me why you want to check up on this poor girl."

"You know that girl who roams around campus but never goes to classes?" Aisha said instantly, pointing out the window as if that would help. "We looked her up last week on the student registrar, remember?"

"Lola," Tecna said, nodding, "I remember."

"Well," Aisha confided, "we think it's a bit suspicious that she never seems to go to classes, yet she always has good grades and a firm grasp of the material. Doesn't that seem a little odd to you?"

Tecna frowned, opening the registrar on her computer. "I suppose it does. I had never really thought about it, but it doesn't mean she's doing anything illegal, necessarily."

"We just want to check up on her," Flora said, raising her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. "Make sure she's getting on all right in her spare time, that she's not hurting herself or missing sleep."

"Mm-hmm." Tecna nodded. "I see. Well, if that's all you want to do, I suppose I can help you. Do you suppose you should let Bloom and Musa know about this?"

Flora nodded as Aisha shook her head. "Come on now, we should," Flora pressed. "They've got problems with those two girls of theirs, we shouldn't keep another struggling students secret from them."

"Exactly, they've got enough problems with those two girls," Aisha countered. "Why bother them with this other girl? The situations probably aren't even related."

"How about we tell them about the plan?" Tecna suggested. "They can come along if they want, but it doesn't need to be a request."

Flora and Aisha exchanged an affirming glance. "Sounds good to me," Aisha offered as Flora nodded her agreement.

---

Musa, who had agreed to come immediately (whereas Bloom had sided with Aisha—she had enough on her plate with her one almost-but-not-quite-failing student and wanted to offer her some extra help, but thanks for asking), knocked on the door to the room listed as Lola's. She had been written up as having two roommates, but they had not been named and no one had felt like trolling the entire registrar on the off chance that they would stumble upon two girls living in the same triple. Noise within the room told them that at least one of the roommates was there, but there was no voice calling them in or allowing them to open the door. Musa knocked again.

"Anyone there?" Aisha called.

A girl spoke quietly inside the room, her voice otherwise unintelligible from the outside, before the doorknob turned and the door opened a crack.

"Who is it?" someone called.

"Teachers," Musa said plainly as Aisha moved to push the door open the rest of the way. It didn't budge an inch, although they couldn't see a jamb or anyone holding it closed. "Can we come in?"

Footsteps from inside the room; someone wearing socks walked closer to the door. It suddenly occurred to Flora that none of them had seen Lola up close, other than a snapshot of her on the first day of school; would they even recognize her if she came to the door?

The apparently shy young girl who let them in stared up at them with deep green eyes, nervously twirling her long hair around her fingers and biting her lower lip. "Yes ma'am?" she asked quietly, stepping back into the room to allow them access. "Have I done something wrong?"

Tecna, Aisha, and Musa appeared equally flabbergasted at the scene before them. They had all sort of expected some rebellious, self-righteous brat to throw open the doors and accuse them of invading her privacy and interrupting her work, not this demure, somewhat fragile-looking girl cowering at her desk in the face of authority. Flora stepped forward at once.

"No, of course not," she said soothingly. "We're just here to make sure nothing is going wrong in your life here; we haven't seen you around much and we were hoping you weren't under some sort of extracurricular pressure."

Relief flooded the girl's face as Flora laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I get so wrapped up in all this work, I don't get out of my room very much."

"Well, it's all right," Tecna assured her, stepping in next to Flora. "It's not a problem, of course, and you don't seem to be suffering for it; we just wanted to make sure you were all right."

Something dark and calculating flashed through the girl's eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared. "I'm doing just fine," she said, smiling. "I'm sorry for worrying the faculty, of course!"

"Say, Lola," Aisha said; the girl blinked a few times at the use of her name as Aisha stepped further into the room and looked around. "The registrar said you have roommates, but we couldn't find out who they were; do you girls get along okay?"

"Oh, goodness, yes!" Lola said, nodding. "We get along quiet well, all three of us, that's certainly not a problem. In fact, we work extremely well together, it's quiet remarkable."

"You don't say," Aisha pressed. "What are their names? As I said, we couldn't find the information in the network."

Lola looked suddenly puzzled, turning in her seat to face the still-investigating Aisha. "You couldn't?" she asked. "That's awfully strange; is it a malfunction in the network?"

"I don't think so," Tecna said, her voice more than a touch patronizing. Lola frowned at the tone but said nothing. "The information must be quarantined for some reason."

"Well, I certainly can't understand why," Lola said, shaking her head, "but if it's privatized for some reason, maybe I shouldn't go around giving it out?" She shrugged, looking away. "I'm very sorry, but I wouldn't feel comfortable giving out information that had been classified for any reason."

Flora patted her shoulder again. "That's all right, dear," she said kindly. "We can find it ourselves; better yet, we'll find out why it's locked up in the first place!"

Lola looked up with her deep green eyes opened wide and grinned, reassured. "Thank you all for checking up on me," she said, though it seemed she was speaking only to Flora. "I really am sorry about this mix-up, and I hope you find what you're looking for!"

Recognizing the implication that, as far as Lola was concerned, their business was complete, the girls waved their goodbyes and left; the door closed itself behind them.

"Anyone else think that was a little _too_ perfect?" Aisha said suspiciously as soon as the door was shut. Musa rolled her eyes skyward as Flora looked perplexed.

"Because it wasn't what we were expecting?" Tecna said skeptically. "Because she wasn't a defiant teenager with black silk hangings on her walls and a fountain of blood in the middle of her witch altar? Expectations often lead to disappointment, it's not too surprising."

Aisha huffed a smothered sigh as they walked towards the teacher's lounge. "I mean, she was _so_ different from what we expected. Maybe not the altar or the blood, but I was expecting at least _some_ discontentment with, I don't know, _something_. But she seemed so happy, so well-adjusted. And what about that whole roommate thing? That was definitely her giving us the slip."

"There's no glitch in the network," Tecna said sourly. Flora shrugged.

"She doesn't know you're the fairy of technology, I bet," she said. "She was just offering up a suggestion, trying to help."

"I don't trust her," Aisha said, refusing to back down. Musa sighed.

"Something is a _little_ weird with that whole roommate thing," she admitted. "We definitely need to find out who those girls are."

"My money's on Anna," Aisha said confidently. "That fragile little thing in Bloom's combat class? She tries really hard in my Flight class, but she's so…I don't know, so little. The two of them would get on well, I bet, they seem so similar."

Tecna sighed. "We'll see."


	5. Trying So Hard to Look Mean

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**trying so hard to look mean**

"I just don't understand it," Bloom said with a casual shrug. "We saw them right before the semester started and haven't heard a word about them since! It's been almost a month!"

Stella absently twirled her spoon around the walls of her smoothie glass. "It's true," she said, "he did seem like the up-front aggressive type. It's weird that he hasn't struck here; I mean, Alfea has so much magic power around it, that's gotta be what he's after. He and his co-conspirators," she finished in a mockingly frightened voice. Bloom stifled a giggle as Tecna shook her head.

"I don't know," she said, shoving her own smoothie glass across the counter towards a dawdling waiter. "Maybe this just isn't our fight. What about that fairy we saw there, Laura? And her two friends? I bet they had everything under control."

"But the authorities keep saying that nothing can be released," Musa said skeptically. "No progress, nothing. We probably would've heard if they'd all been captured."

Aisha nodded. "That's true," she said, wagging her finger in the air to accentuate her point. "Now that it's in the public eye that these guys are out there, it'd have to get out if they were taken off the street. Those fairies can't have _too_ much taken care of, we would've heard about it."

"Why haven't we seen those fairies around?" Flora wondered aloud. "They couldn't have been much older than seventeen, I don't think; they should be attending Alfea, or at least they should have in the past."

"We only know the one girl's name," Musa pointed out, leaning back in her chair. "'Laura plus two.' That's not a lot to go on."

"Still, she's right," Stella said. "We should've recognized their faces, we saw them all well enough. Even if I didn't recognize them, I would definitely have remembered those outfits; very anti-fairy, don't you think?"

Bloom tried to brush the comment off, dismissively shifting her shoulders, but she had noticed the same thing. Their outfits hadn't been the brightly colored, glamorous costumes she had come to expect from Alfea fairies; they had been as beautiful as any fairy's she had ever seen, of course, just unusually…dark. Weirdly shimmer-y, but dark. Mottled purples and pale lavender, dirty stained blues, rich greens, even charcoal black; when Bloom thought back to the witches she had fought, she couldn't even recall anything more threatening than a vivid red or metallic blue.

And on top of that was the way they had been _acting_. Laura had acted without any regard for the safety of anyone on the ground, completely focused on her target as she broke down buildings and threw violent strikes, moving with such effortless speed that Bloom hadn't even been able to keep track of her. When the other two had arrived, their discussion had been so curt and short-tempered; they had clearly been on this case together for awhile, and were familiar with one another's tactics and goals. And the one girl who had captured Laura's enemy; the way she had held him up, as if by invisible strings, and remained completely unfazed by his snapping his jaws at her… They were used to fighting those guys, that much was for sure. Those girls were cut from a different cloth, made of sterner stuff than Bloom had ever seen or expected to find within the realm of fairies.

"Hello-o, Bloom!" Stella said exuberantly, waving her hand in front of Bloom's apparent spacing out. "You with us?"

"Huh?" Bloom blurted suddenly, jerking her head back. "Of—of course, I'm fine. Just thinking."

Stella winked. "About Sky, I guess," she teased as Aisha rolled her eyes.

"About those fairies we saw fighting that guy," Bloom corrected, frowning into the pink fruit residue at the bottom of her glass.

At a strangely coincidental moment that Bloom might have found frightening a few years ago, a loud crash shattered the air outside the juice bar as the window of the music shop across the street exploded.

Flora pointed out the blown-open door of the juice bar. "Would that be those fairies?" she asked rhetorically as one of the unidentified fairies flew into view, seemingly falling backwards from several feet up and catching herself inches before she hit the ground. As Bloom watched, transfixed, the fairy flung her left arm out towards her target and pulled her right arm back, clenching her fingers in a vague grasping motion. Someone out of sight made a choking sound and she yanked her arms together above her head as the choking grew louder and more desperate.

"Oh my God!" screamed a woman out in the street, plastering herself to a shredded storefront and gaping at the scene above her. The fairy paid no attention to the cowering woman, gritting her teeth and flying back out of view. Biting her lip, Bloom ran out into the road to help the woman; Stella followed, ignoring Musa's attempts to hold them both back. As Bloom and Stella attempted to calm her, offering comforting arms around her quaking shoulders, she shook them off and ran away, leaving them perplexedly in the dust. Aisha and Flora jogged outside, looking up at the scene unfolding above them, while Tecna held out her PDA in an attempt to get some sort of reading on the action.

All three mysterious fairies were in the sky fighting a single enemy, an elegantly attractive lady who might have been 20 years old, maybe younger. The girls were circling around her, moving in and out and switching places with startling rapidity. All at once, Laura seemed to vanish; one of the unnamed fairies made a sharp sound and turned slightly as her arm began to bleed while the one in the middle smirked, flying straight up. Musa gasped; Laura appeared out of thin air, bashing her elbow down into the strange woman's head and sending her down with a wounded scream and a dull thudding sound.

"Sabrina!" she shouted as the woman fell, alerting the fairy who had first called the Winx girls' attention to the battle. The fairy (Sabrina?) put her hand out and drew her fingers up through the air as through shifting sands; the woman stopped falling, her arms and legs flung out at unnatural angles and trapping her as if in a spider's web. Laura flew back down to her partners, halting beside the wounded fairy to glance at her arm—which was no longer wounded. Tecna frowned at the scene, putting her PDA back into her pocket.

"This is too much," Bloom said bitterly. "Winx Believix!"

"Oh, God," the still-unidentified fairy moaned, dragging her hand down over her face as the girls flew up to surround her. Unsurprisingly, Laura vanished again and reappeared beside Sabrina and her captive, avoiding their assault.

"Who are you?" Stella snapped, holding out her hands and trying to threaten her with a violently glowing ball of golden energy. "What are you doing here?"

"What do you know about Aster?" Aisha added, balling up her fists. The fairy only rolled her eyes.

"Please," she muttered. "I suppose if you _must_ put your curiosity to rest… I am Cadenza, fairy of Silence. And you," she made a sweeping gesture towards the Winx girls, "are in my way."

Stella flew down below the fairy as Musa hovered above her in an attempt to block any chance at escape. "What about Aster?" Musa asked again, an edge in her voice. "You must know something about all this that's been going on, tell us what you've heard."

"Why haven't they attacked us?" Stella asked fiercely. "They should be jumping to get at Alfea and all the magic stored there, but we haven't seen or heard a thing in weeks!"

Cadenza let out a bark of a laugh, tipping her head back in an exaggerated show of laziness. "You fairies sure are self-centered," she mocked. "Aster and his team aren't after magic archives or fairy prisoners; they're after _power_, and targeting Alfea isn't exactly the best way to get it. There are stronger people in the universe, believe it or not, stronger and more influential."

"So why haven't they come after the Dragon Fire?" Bloom asked, encircling herself in ropes of bright fire. "If they want power, they should be coming to the source!"

A quiet laugh echoed strangely from behind Flora; the fairies spun around to face Sabrina, who floated midair with her fingers pressed to her smirking mouth. "How arrogant," she said with a trace of humor left in her voice. "Meadowsweet isn't after magical power; they're after real power, the power that can only be achieved by honest rule over worlds of subjects."

"Meadowsweet?" Tecna asked at once, leaning forward as she attempted to look threatening. Sabrina only backed up, jerking her still-unconscious prisoner along with her.

"The name of this organization," Laura said patronizingly, examining her nails. "You're familiar with the concept, I believe? The Trix, the Black Circle, the Company of Light, and so on."

Bloom had to forcibly jerk herself back to refrain from lunging at the other fairy, her hands balled into fists. Stella growled audibly, her energy flaring dangerously. Cadenza rolled her eyes and laid her hands on her hips, shaking her head.

"Oh, Laura," she drawled sarcastically, "now you've gone and got them all bothered. We'd better go before they get _angry_."

Laura shrugged. "If you say so."

"Hey, don't you even _think_ about going anywhere!" Aisha snarled, reaching out to grab Cadenza but finding herself reaching through the air as the three fairies and their curious prisoner vanished. Nearly toppling head over heels, she righted herself in a moment and shook her head, looking around angrily.

Musa led their descent, Flora going so far as to sit on the ground with her chin in her hands and transform back out of her Believix form. Stella stomped her foot on the ground as Bloom folded her arms, looking forlornly into the vacant sky. Tecna tapped away furiously at her PDA and Aisha clutched her own forearms tightly.

Finally, Bloom voiced what they were all trying not to think about.

"What is going _on_?"


	6. She Got Style Now Let's See

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**she got style now let's see  
**

"All right, ladies," Musa said sternly, "we're going to have a bit of a psychology lesson today." Surprisingly, Dana leaned forward eagerly in her seat as Dayquiria and Ioana exchanged a curious look. Allison remained as expressionless as always, even when Janika tried to catch her attention, smiling widely and tilting towards the other girl conspiratorially.

"Has anyone ever heard of fairies going bad?"

A pretty, sweet-tempered fairy in the second row named Nahla raised her hand. "My sister Ziva," she said shyly. "She joined a gang of witches and other bad fairies when she turned fifteen; my parents locked her up for a month and now she doesn't really talk anymore."

Musa paused, her drive suddenly drained out of her. She might have expected some story about a fairy bully at elementary school, but to hear of such coldness perpetrated by a fairy's _parents_… How could such awful people have produced such a lovely girl as Nahla while simultaneously breaking down her sister? Blinking back her disbelief, she pointed to Evangelia waving her hand in the back.

"Some girls in my hometown," she said seriously, leaning forward over her desk. "They teased my friends all the time in middle school, they made _so much_ fun of us. They were really, really mean."

"Okay," Musa said, latching onto the simple example. "That's good. Good examples, I mean. Now these girls from Evangelia's middle school are a classic example of fairies trying to be popular by putting down others; not all fairies are kind or giving or even very nice. They're people just like you and me and anyone, vulnerable to pressure. So, any ideas of what else could make a fairy turn like that?"

"Could it be a lust for fame?" Charisma said in what Musa had come to dub her "sexy" voice, the tone she used when trying to sound devious and playfully coy. Musa nodded, looking around the room for other volunteers.

"Yes, that's one possibility; any others?"

"Insecurity," Dayquiria said, raising her hand as a formality.

"Good," Musa said with a distracted nod, "any others?"

The girls shrugged, looking around at one another. So far they had all been feeding textbook middle-school clique trends, not exactly what Musa had been looking for; on the other hand, she supposed, it was a little unreasonable of her to expect her freshman history class to help clue her in to the three fairies' motive, or what this Meadowsweet group was up to (which they still had to investigate, she reminded herself), but she had hoped—

"Desire."

"Excuse me?"

Musa looked around for the strangely familiar voice, finally landing on a surprisingly self-assured Allison, still in the back row, stone-still as always, giving away no indication that she had just spoken. Janika grinned at her again and received no acknowledgment in response.

Musa fumbled for a way to keep the strange girl talking. "Would you care to elaborate on that?" she asked, sounding obnoxious and annoying even to her own ears. Allison leveled her stare, her cat-eyes eerily challenging, and gave the smallest hint of a smile.

"Desire is the root of action," she said, her tone quiet and commanding as always. Every other girl in the room turned to look at her, giving her an effortless audience. "Desire, motivation; these are the things which move us to act. Failure to take action indicates not a lack of desire, but a lack of motivation, a lack of willingness to put forth the effort to accomplish one's goals and fulfill one's wishes."

Musa nodded; she made a bizarre kind of sense. "How does that tie into the original question?" she challenged, completely unwilling to let this girl off the hook. A smirk flashed across Allison's face, barely there at all before she was answering in her fluidly confident way.

"All kingdoms must have kings," she began disjointedly. Musa raised her eyebrow somewhat disbelievingly but Allison was speaking completely within her own realm, not acknowledging Musa's presence or authority at all. "Any fairy is prone to arrogance, to self-righteousness, to a sense of belonging at the top of the ladder. It does not strike everyone's fancy to be such a ruler, but magic does not make us immune. Greed, a desire to be the best, drives fairies to harm others in their quest for that status. Those who cannot bring forth the motivation, or who merely do not have the means to achieve it honestly, or at least, the birthright to do so under the umbrella of our hierarchical society, may turn to more violent means to accomplish this end."

When she stopped speaking, her appearance otherwise unchanged, the class remained fixated on her, apparently too intimidated by her sudden burst of intellectual participation to offer responses themselves. Musa watched them all watching her and frowned; it wasn't that her points hadn't been good, just that they had been a little darker than she had expected. Although, to be fair, nothing in particular could really be _expected_ from Allison; she didn't let on much, and Musa hadn't spoken to her after that first day. Musa cleared her throat and nodded, trying to reclaim control of her class.

"Thank you, Allison," she said, trying to brush the girl off as students began to turn back and face the front of the room again. "Well, now, were any of you in Magix yesterday?" she asked rhetorically. "There was quite a battle there, I don't know if word has gotten around about it."

"My mother was there," Ioana said. "She called me last night and said that some fairies were fighting and that some girls tried to assault her."

_Oops_. "Assault her?" Musa said, smiling. "No, I think that was my friends—Miss Bloom and Miss Stella, I mean. They weren't trying to assault her, they were trying to help her."

Ioana shrugged, looking away. "Probably, my mom can be kind of jumpy when there's action around, she's not great in the—in the face of conflict, you know, battle."

"Hey, it's fine," Musa said. "No harm, no foul. If you could let your mother know what really happened, it would help us out a lot at the next parent-teacher conference, I'm sure."

Charisma raised her hand. "What did really happen?"

Musa sighed. She should have foreseen this as unavoidable when she brought it up; in fact, it had been pretty stupid of her _not_ to, but hey, she had been going out on a limb at first anyway. "Does anybody know?" she asked before she got going. Nahla raised her hand and waited for Musa to call on her before speaking.

"I was told that four fairies were having a violent battle," she recited, "and one of them was captured by the other three. When the battle was over, six fairies with Believix power tried to corner one of the captors but they all escaped."

Wow, word traveled fast in Magix. Musa nodded her approval. "That's pretty much it," she confirmed.

"Were you and the other new professors the Believix fairies?" Dana asked eagerly, her fingers dancing across her desktop. "I heard that the fairies said some stuff before they got away, what did they say? What really happened?"

"We were," Musa confirmed, wondering suddenly how many other Believix fairies there were in the rest of the Magix dimension. There had to be a few, at least; it was a big dimension and Earth surely wasn't the only place in the universe where not everyone believed in magic. But more importantly, how much was too much to tell these girls? How much was enough to help them find out who the fairies were? Well, come to think of it…

Musa eyed Allison critically as she made her next statement. "The fairy we cornered," she said stiffly, "told us her name, and we found out the names of her partners as well."

"What were they?" Wanda asked, her nails biting into the soft wood of her desk. Allison remained impassive.

"Laura and Sabrina," Musa said. Allison held her gaze. "Cadenza was the one we trapped and the only one whose power we have reliable information on; she told us she is the fairy of Silence."

"What good would that do a person?" Dayquiria asked, honest curiosity born in her wide eyes. Musa shrugged.

"I honestly couldn't tell you exactly," she admitted, "but she certainly has a lot of power behind her."

The clock chimed a loud melody and Musa frowned. Class had flown by and been far less productive than she would have liked. "Don't forget we have a test the day after tomorrow," she said, her eyes locked on a point on the wall across from her. "Allison, I'd like to speak with you before you go to your next class."

Exactly as it had happened that first day nearly two months ago, the class filed out of the room gossiping quietly as Allison gathered her books and practically glided to the front of the room, her face expressionless as Musa had ever seen it. "Yes ma'am?" she asked politely, a note of derision behind it as though she knew where this was going and already had as much control over it as she needed, if not more. Musa frowned; that was new and, as far as she was concerned, uncalled for, no matter how smart this girl was.

"I got the sense when you were speaking today that you know more about this situation than you let on," she said bluntly. "Any information you have would be critical to stopping this gang, and you really ought to let the _proper authorities_ know about it."

Allison's eyes shone brightly as she nodded. "I assure you, ma'am, the proper authorities are already aware."

"I don't mean those fairies who keep taking this gang on by themselves," Musa clarified, her suspicions rising. "The fairy of Silence is an unknown around here, I'm sure you're aware. Someone like that can't be trusted with this kind of critical information that should be getting along to the police."

"I'm sure the fairy of Silence is strong enough to take care of her own business," Allison said, unmoving. Musa bit the inside of her cheek to keep her tone and her temper controlled.

"What did you say your power was, again?" she asked, her knuckles white as she clenched the edge of her desk. Allison's smile was patronizingly gentle; she had to have known it would come to this.

Shrugging uncharacteristically, she stepped backwards toward the door. "I'm afraid I didn't," she said.

"Well, would you tell me now?"

Allison rested her hand on the doorframe and clenched her fingers together—Musa recognized that motion somehow, though she had probably only seen it once or twice before, and where?

"Control," Allison said. She spun around the doorframe and left Musa in her dust.

Musa flipped open her phone without a second thought.

"Bloom, can you talk?"


	7. Down the Road That's So Uncertain

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**down the road that's so uncertain  
**

Tecna was absolutely up in arms over this new information; she hadn't put down her PDA for more than a moment in what might have been hours, and that had only been to turn on her several desktop computers. Musa occasionally tried getting a word in edgewise, but the other girl was completely unresponsive, leaving her friends to talk amongst themselves and invent increasingly implausible theories as they waited for her results.

It had actually started off reasonably enough—"Maybe her power is basically mind control," Bloom had proposed, "like making her enemies…not fight her?"—and reached increasingly outrageous heights only a short time later—"I bet she controls the _fabric_ of the _universe_," Stella had said conspiratorially, "like some kind of _god_ fairy."

"Yeah," Aisha said sarcastically, "I bet that's it. She's the human equivalent of the Great Dragon, and she and Bloom are going to have an epic battle to determine the fate of the universe."

Stella pouted, folding her arms across her chest and sulking back into her chair. "It was just an idea," she said sourly.

Bloom laughed and shook her head. "Don't worry, Stella," she reassured, "it's an interesting idea. I just bet we would've heard of a fairy like that before now if it was true."

"Seriously, though," Flora said, her brow furrowed in thought, "what kind of power could a Control fairy have? We haven't ever really seen fairies with powers that aren't based in some kind of natural force. This is completely unknown."

"That's unfortunately true," Musa said coolly. "I haven't seen her use any sort of power in any of my classes, or outside them, so I can't say anything firsthand."

Bloom frowned. "Could we ask her?"

Despite the rationality of the solution, Musa shook her head dismissively, even as Stella nodded her agreement. "Nah. Even when she told me _what_ her power was, she sounded like she was teasing me; she won't tell us anything else."

The staccato of Tecna's clicking keyboard filled the silence as the girls tried to figure out what to do. There was no reason to give Allison any sort of demerit; she handed in high-quality work on time and was never disruptive in class or out, and had even been fairly unobtrusive until this most resent transgression (if it could even be called that). Even as a teacher, Musa couldn't punish her for being a brat, and there was no real way to prove that she was controlling information critical to the capture of the Meadowsweet group (if she even was).

"Does she have any friends?" Aisha asked.

Musa shrugged. "I haven't seen her hang out with anyone. There's one girl in my class, Janika, who tries really hard to make friends with her—I think that's what she does, she's always smiling at her, it's like this masochistic unreciprocated thing she's got going on. But Allison never pays any attention to her and I've never even seen her speak to any of the other girls, either."

"Is she even in any of our other classes?" Bloom asked suddenly. "I mean, I could see not noticing her much, not having it occur to us if she's as quiet as Musa says, but…she's gotta be taking more than just the one, right?"

Tecna suddenly stopped typing, moving to a different screen and tapping it a few times. "Here are our registration lists," she said. "Check for Allison's name, I'm almost done with this."

Flora leaned over the screen and trailed her finger down the lists. "It says she's in Musa's class as well as Stella's and Tecna's," she said. "Allison of Tempero, she seems to be maintaining a 4.0 without much trouble. But that's all it says."

Stella shook her head. "I can't believe I didn't remember her; Musa, what does she look like?"

Pressing down on the girl's name, Flora called up a picture of her on the computer screen. Musa pointed—"Pretty much like that."

Leaning over to scrutinize the picture, Stella nodded as she rested her fingers on her chin thoughtfully. "Oh yes," she said, "I do remember this girl. I never knew her name, she never speaks."

"Sounds familiar," Musa muttered.

Aisha waved her hands. "Anyway. Allison of Tempero, fairy of Control, very quiet, very smart. Is that all we know so far?"

"Very much a brat," Musa said testily. Flora frowned, turning back to face the group.

"That's not entirely fair," she said, hand on her hip. "She's only spoken to you like this once, right? Otherwise she seems pretty inoffensive. Maybe she was just having a bad day."

Finally finished with her work—whatever it had been—Tecna turned around in her seat, looking as eager as any of them had ever seen her. The energy in the room seemed to pool around the center of the circle as each girl leaned forward, eager to hear something, anything, that might help sort this mystery out. Tecna smiled proudly and appeared to try and calm herself, taking a deep breath.

"Well." Tecna bit her lower lip and grinned, unable to contain her excitement. "I think I may have found a link between a couple of problems in our lives right now."

"Well don't just gloat about it," Stella urged, "let's hear everything you found!"

Taking a deep, giddy breath, Tecna swung one of her monitors around so the rest of the group could see it, pointing to a long article pulled up in the middle of the screen. "Tempero," she read, "the Control planet, located in the Agnosco system. Breeds fairies with the mind-based power of Control."

"So I was right, she _does_ use the power of mind control," Bloom said seriously, leaning forward to take in this new information. Tecna shook her head.

"No, that's not what it means," she said. "The power of Control is based in a fairy's mind, that's what it's saying. It doesn't have a source like the elemental powers do; she can use her power even if there's no sunlight," she pointed to Stella, "no nature," to Flora, "no music," to Musa, "or anything else. It could be just her and her enemy in a black box room and she would still have all her magic."

Stella shook her head disbelievingly. "No, no way," she said. "There's no way a fairy can survive without the power of nature, we're just not—that's not the way it works!"

"Apparently some can," Tecna said, knocking her crooked finger against the screen. "From the size of the Agnosco system, as far as I can tell, quite a lot of them. It's pretty big; in addition to Tempero, there's also Maeror, Videlicet, Speculum, Aetas, Conticeo… The list goes on." She shrugged, dragging her fingertip along the screen to scroll the page down. "It's not too surprising, when you think about it; the Agnosco system appears to keep pretty separate from the dimension of Magix, and I would expect a lot of people just don't _know_ about it. The fairies there don't seem to want to mix much with the more elemental magics."

"Wait," Aisha cut in, "so _they_ know about us, but _we_ don't know about _them_? That's so unfair! Un_just_!"

As the other girls made affirmative gestures to show their agreement, Tecna frowned and rested her chin in her hands. "I don't know," she said, "it's not really _that_ unfair, I don't think. It wasn't that hard to find this information; the tricky part was finding information about fairies of Control and exactly what their powers are. The stuff about the Agnosco system is right out there on the 'nets, and it's not hard to figure what _kinds_ of power are on each planet. Just what exactly those powers are _for_, what they can _do_. Maeror, for instance, is the planet of fairies of Grief and Sorrow. No," she said before any of the girls could ask, "that doesn't mean they're depressed all the time. Just that their power involves grieving, somehow. I would estimate that they use their magic to make their enemies so sorrowful, grieve so much over nothing at all, that they more or less destroy themselves." She shrugged. "But without empirical evidence, I can't be sure."

That was certainly true. The girls sat back somewhat abashedly, each collecting her own thoughts; it wasn't like the information _couldn't_ be acquired, just that it typically _wasn't_. If these non-elemental fairies tried to stay away from Magix proper, there was no real reason to suspect their existence, which explained the lack of general knowledge about them around the realm. Who knew, maybe there was just as much misinformation and absent knowledge in Agnosco about Magix as there was in the reverse.

"I guess it's no one's fault that our powers are a lot more straightforward," Flora said finally. "If they know we exist over here, and they have as much information about us as we do about them, it's not hard to figure this stuff out. I mean, Linphea, the planet of the Nature fairies? Anyone could just guess what kind of magic we have at home, what it does, what it's for."

Clearly displeased with the conclusion but willing to begrudgingly admit to it, Stella shrugged dismissively and jerked her head aside in what might, under other circumstances, have been an obvious nod. Bloom nudged her shoulder, making a goading face, and she rolled her eyes.

"It's true, the offensive nature of our powers is much more obvious," Tecna summarized. "In any case, I did manage to find out some information about the Control fairies."

Stella leaned forward at once, her eyes bright. "Dish, dish, dish!" she said eagerly. Bloom pulled a face but shook off her friend's scattered attitude and Flora smiled sagely.

"Right," Tecna said, her excitement fading just slightly. "Well, the Control fairies don't control their enemies mentally," her eyes darted to Bloom and back to the computer screen, "but physically. Like puppets, you might say. They have the power to control their movements. Remember Darcy's power when she kept hypnotizing Riven?" Musa ground her teeth and sunk her nails into her chair. "It's not like that. Because it doesn't rely on overpowering a person's mental state, it's very dangerous; contingent entirely upon the user's—the fairy's ability to control her own power. Her own strength, not her strength in relation to her opponent."

Musa itched her nails along the chair, digging at the wood as she tried to remember something—it was at the very tip of her brain, she could _almost see it_, what _was_ it…

"Sabrina!" she burst out suddenly. Tecna looked at her curiously and Bloom made a waving motion with her hand, urging her to elaborate. Musa shook her head as if to clear it and twisted her mouth as if it had a sour taste in it. "Don't you remember?" she asked fiercely. "Sabrina, the fairy from Magix, she's a Control fairy! She must be from Tempero too, Allison must know her. That's why she's been so—that's why she's trying to tease us, she thinks she knows something we don't because she's friends with Sabrina!"

Tecna pointed at Musa, wide grin plastered back on her face. "Very close," she said smugly. "I managed to film part of the last battle we saw and I ran Sabrina's face through a matching software against all the students in Alfea, just to make sure. Before we let this information loose on the public sphere, I mean."

"Oh my God!" Flora cried, raising her hands to her mouth.

Tecna winked. "Bingo."

Musa shook her head, half disbelieving and half fascinated. They both spoke with soft tones, but Sabrina was so forceful, so…callous, swiftly confident in her actions…exactly as Allison had described in class that very day. Powerful and motivated, but by Allison's definition still unturned (as far as Musa could tell) because she was not driven by greed (or at least she didn't appear to be so). The poor girl had struck Musa as unnecessarily self-assured, but tragically mature for her age, maybe misguided in her interpretation of the world and its inner workings. But if she and Sabrina were really the same person…

"They look so different," Stella marveled in a hushed tone.

"Sabrina's hair is a lot longer," Aisha commented wryly, trying not to draw herself down too seriously. Stella shook her head, still stunned.

"Not just that," she said slowly. "Allison is so unassuming, so…so unpretentious, so unnoticed."

Her eyes glued to the image overlay on Tecna's computer screen, Bloom nodded. "Sabrina was completely in control of that fight. She jerked that fairy around like it was nothing, she didn't even seem to care if she was hurting her."

Tecna rolled her shoulders in the authoritatively impassive way only she could.

"Just goes to show what keeping quiet can do."


	8. Don't Tell Me We're Forgiven

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**don't tell me we're forgiven**

As she did every day, Stella ended her class with a little flaunt of her latest outfit, tossing her hair (maybe a little snobbishly) and coming to a stop with a little spin to face her students. Waving them out as the bell rang, she pressed her finger to her mouth and raised her other hand.

"Allison, I'd like to speak to you," she called out. The tall girl practically sauntered to the front of the room, somehow making it anything _but_ cocky, looking utterly unlike Stella could ever recall having seen her and as far from Musa's description as a person could be.

"Ma'am?" she said quietly, her cat-eyes suddenly doe-soft and impossibly innocent. Stella frowned, more than a little confused and even more annoyed at how much she found herself being taken in by the act.

She held up a reasonably-sized folder, waving it a little as she tried to land on a topic that wouldn't alert any other eavesdropping students to anything strange. "Your work is very impressive, Allison," she said, sounding weak even to her own ears. "Some of the other professors and I have been meeting to discuss your grades and frankly we're a little suspicious of your apparent…talents in so many incredibly different areas."

Allison's perplexedly pursed lips couldn't hide her far-too-knowing eyes nearly enough for Stella's liking. "I regret that you have come to that conclusion," she said in a honeyed tone, "but I can't apologize for being intelligent." Callista's and Lita's gossipy whispers were quieted as they closed the door behind themselves and Allison immediately dropped her (admittedly impressive) act. "Miss Stella," she said, her tone leaving no room for argument but not at all bitter, "we both know what you really want to talk to me about, and I can promise you that I will not be giving any information to you, or any other professor, about Laura and Cadenza."

"So you aren't going to deny it?" Stella asked at once without needing to clarify the subject. Allison's quick laugh was frighteningly cold.

"Of course not," she said. "There would be no purpose. I'm certain Miss Tecna's software results are non-negotiable and I have no desire to refute your evidence, strong or weak as it may be. Sabrina is not an attempt to hide my identity from anyone who I do not consider to be a threat."

Stella took a moment to marvel at how much Allison was speaking, trying not to read too much into the line about not being a threat. As far as she knew, the girl had never said a word in her class beyond an introduction at the beginning of the year (which had been nothing more than her name, as she recalled). Clearly she was nowhere near all she appeared; a first-year would never be so brash as to make the kinds of claims Allison was making, no matter how self-centered or stupidly overconfident.

"Then why use her at all?"

"You _have_ lead a sheltered life, haven't you?" Allison said with false marvel. "There are many planets which breed fairies, witches, all varieties of magical beings who can do terrible things to a person with little more than her name. It is not at all unusual for fairies in Agnosco to have several pseudonyms; we live in tightly knit groups." She shrugged, tossing her hair and inspecting her nails in a clear show of faked indifference. "In this realm, where even one false identity may be overkill, I have no need to use any more than the one."

Stella frowned; as a princess, and even just as a teacher, she was unused to being treated with such disdain. "The same goes for Laura and Cadenza, then?" she asked snappishly.

"Of course," Allison said, her posture languid but still strangely wound up, as though she was ready to bolt at the slightest sign of danger. "I believe I've said all I need to, and if you don't have anything to talk to me about, I'll be on my way." Her small smile changed to a thin smirk. "I have schoolwork to keep up with, after all. Don't want my grades to start slipping; someone might start asking questions."

Stella gaped after her as she walked out of the room, turning back into the shadow on the wall as soon as the door opened on the rest of the student body. This girl was more dangerous than they had ever thought, and if she was the quiet one of her trio of fairy freaks, then they _really_ needed to watch out for Laura and Cadenza, which meant they _really_ needed to find out who the other girls were. Like, _now_.

---

"She's _scary_."

Three hours later and the memory of her frozen eyes still made Stella quiver. Bloom rubbed her hands along her friend's shoulders and tried (again) to force her to drink one of Flora's special herbal teas.

"What exactly did you find out?" Tecna asked (again).

Stella frowned, massaging her temples. "I told you, not a lot. She's not gonna tell me—us anything about Laura or Cadenza, so she says we shouldn't even ask. She says they're definitely fake names, and that they each have a few, but in Magix the kind of magic that uses people's names isn't nearly as common, so they think they can each stick with one fake name and it's enough."

"Run through it one more time?" Musa asked (nearly begged). Stella grit her teeth and growled, loud and scratchy.

"I _told_ you!" she snapped, running over the meeting in her own mind (again) without repeating it. "Wait," she said suddenly, her eyes wide and her hand raised in a "hold it" gesture. "One more thing she said, she said she wasn't using the Sabrina name to hide from anyone she didn't consider threatening."

Tecna began typing furiously as Aisha's mouth dropped open. "What?" she sneered, eyes narrowed. "She doesn't consider us a threat, what a joke!"

Flora fidgeted nervously, shifting from side to side in her chair and pawing at her dress. "Well, she kind of has a point," she said meekly. Aisha's furious gaze swung around to her so fast it was a wonder she didn't hurt herself, but Flora met her gaze without backing away. "It's true," she went on, her voice more neutral. "We all saw them fighting the Meadowsweet fairy awhile back; Sabrina jerked her around like it was no big deal at all, and we all saw Cadenza get hurt. The cut was healed in no time. And it's obvious Laura hasn't been using her Teleport wings to move so quickly in all the times we've seen her; she's just that fast." She shrugged, some of her nervous hesitance returning. "They're very well-equipped for battle."

"Not so well equipped to be normal," Bloom muttered under her breath. Stella nodded vigorously.

"Maybe they're normal in Agnosco," Tecna offered.

"Are you trying to _defend_ them?" Aisha snarled.

"I just meant that they come from an entirely different part of the universe!" Tecna retorted. "Maybe what's normal to us is foreign to them!"

"Maybe they're _wrong_!" Aisha stood from her chair, slightly crouched and obviously gunning for a fight.

"Just because they're _different_?" Tecna gripped the edges of her chair and stiffened her back against it.

"Girls!" Bloom shouted, standing and throwing her arms up. Aisha and Tecna turned her similarly defiant glares and she stared them down, hands moved down to her dramatically cocked hips. "Girls," she repeated, a little quieter and a little more severe, "we have to remember the main threat here. If they're after what these fairies say, then Meadowsweet is after real, political power, and they don't care how they get it, probably who they kill or—or _whatever_. We have to be able to get to them before the fairies do or they'll be _killed_."

The two fairies settled for a last glare and Aisha rolled her eyes, but Musa became pensive at Bloom's energetic words. Drumming her fingers along the desk where she rested her arm, she bit her lip and made a quietly hesitant sound.

"Well—I mean, is that…"

Stella rested her chin in her hands, watching Musa interestedly. "Is that what?"

Musa shifted in her chair. "I mean… Would that be such a horrible thing?"

Bloom's eyes went wide. "_Kill them_, Musa. As in, bang bang, you're _dead_."

"Well, I know, but I… Well, I—okay, if they're doing such horrible things that we don't even _know_ what they're doing because it's being covered up so, so effectively, so fast, then it's gotta be really bad, right? I mean, _really_ bad. Why would be so awful if they _were_ dead?" Musa shrugged. "At least then they'd be gone. I mean, forever."

"Forever is a long time, Musa," Stella said gravely, fixing the other girl with a pointed look. It was more than obvious that she was thinking, as they all were suddenly, of Musa's mother. Bloom only shook her head in shocked silence.

Only the sound of silence alerted the girls to the fact that Tecna had been typing away for awhile; she swung one of her screens around to show them something and Musa was the only one who didn't look right away.

"There's one article on the entire Internet about Meadowsweet that doesn't have to do with the plant," Tecna said, as if they couldn't read it themselves. "I've been looking for a few days, it was pretty hard to find; someone really doesn't want the general public to know who these people are."

None of them felt the need to read aloud, though Bloom usually liked to; the article spoke loudly enough for itself, detailing things none of them ever really wanted to know about these people (no matter how much they needed to). Torture—not the down-and-dirty stuff of airport paperbacks but intense, long-term, emotional and mental breakdowns, dangerously hardcore and frighteningly comprehensible. Ruined lives, ruined kingdoms, ruined _planets_. The MO didn't change much from place to place, but it was surprisingly effective and disturbingly thorough; starting at the personal level, members of Meadowsweet would destabilize core officers and important individuals in a society's ruling body, eventually moving up to the point where new leadership was necessary (and a member of their organization "just happened" to be the best suited for the job, or so it seemed to the generous populous), or failing to move in effectively and (apparently easily) wiping out any and all life on the planet as a whole.

The piece itself was short and fairly lost for actual names of sacked planets, but it was so excruciatingly detailed in its assessment of the methods of torture that it must have been written by one of Meadowsweet's old victims. It closed with a desperate (if barely comprehensible) plea for "someone anyone for the LOVE of God PLease" to take them down before "anyone should ever ever never ever have to alive through this again never ever please, God , no don't let them do it just - make it go Away!!!"

Bloom pressed her palms to her eyes and blinked away hot tears.

"Well," she said in a slightly broken voice. "That's it. We have to take them down."

Musa shivered. "We have to kill them."

"We can't," Flora said softly, shaking her head. "No matter what they did, we can't just… I can't _take a life_ like that. I couldn't ever."

"We haven't before," Bloom said determinedly, "and we won't now. We'll lock them in the Omega dimension, somewhere deep down where they'll never get out."

Aisha scoffed. "Yeah, because that worked so well for the Trix the last time we tried it."

"Well, we can't let them go!"

Musa shook her head. "We can't." She took a shuddering breath. "No one can ever let them go, ever again. They have to die."

Stella shrugged noncommittally. "I know they've done a lot of awful things, but do we really—I mean, I don't think I like that idea."

Tecna raised her hand in a vague attempt to restore order, drawing their attention to a single point. "Let's think about this logically for a moment," she said seriously. Aisha rolled her eyes and Tecna steadfastly ignored her. "What is our proposed alternative to killing them?" Musa and Bloom opened their mouths to respond but Tecna plowed on without waiting for a response. "Torture. The Omega dimension is designed specifically for that purpose, to make the wicked suffer for their crimes; every member of Meadowsweet would certainly receive the harshest punishment possible for all they've done. Wouldn't death be a more merciful conclusion, in this instance?"

The girls were all forced back a step at that summation. It wasn't something that typically occurred to…anyone, really. Finally Stella spoke up again.

"Well, then. Who among us here is really the more sadistic?"

Bloom shook her head. "We've gotta talk to Allison."


	9. Hard and Silent But Softly Breaking

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**hard and silent but softly breaking**

Any plans to corner the infuriatingly reclusive Control fairy were put on hold the next morning when an enormous explosion rocked Alfea's campus at what Musa blearily referred to as "way-too-damn-early o'clock in the morning." Instantly about thirty times more paranoid than normal, Bloom rushed out to her balcony to scope the action, already posing to leap off, transform into her Believix, and join the action (in roughly that order) as Stella groggily wailed about beauty sleep, rolling over but remaining otherwise stationary.

Laura was skittering around the sky at what must have been some high number of miles per hour as Aisha strolled out to check the situation, yawning and stretching as she went, and Flora seemed to actually blossom out of a flower which was, in fact, only serving as a sort of mobile stool, giving her a closer view of the aerial show. Tecna, by far the most alert, was judging the situation quietly and (as usual) tracking each player with her PDA; some foreign fairy-and-wizard team who rivaled Laura's speed appeared beside her, and the fairy seemed poised to snatch the device but either thought better of it—or was too distracted by Cadenza's sudden appearance when the fairy bashed the pair into the ground with something like a sharp whip of energy.

Drawing all the Winx girls' attention, Sabrina appeared out of nowhere above the newly immobilized fairy-wizard team and snapped her arms out; as she drew them up over her head, wrists dangling, the two were drawn up as well, both looking significantly worse for the wear, not having been able to recover yet from Cadenza's attack, and hanging limply in midair. Smirking, Cadenza flew down toward them with her outstretched hand inexplicably glowing white. As she drew closer, the light grew brighter; it appeared to engulf the entire quad for no more than a few seconds before it faded away completely to reveal the wizard, screaming violently and clearly trying his best to thrash about (with no luck) and the fairy, sobbing and biting her lip until it bled freely. The Winx girls watched, transfixed, as the pair struggled vainly to free themselves.

"Come on!" the pinned fairy screamed, more a tortured plea than anything else. "Isn't this _enough_?"

Cadenza stepped towards them slowly, her eyes narrowed to slits and her face fixed in a cruel smirk. "It'll never be enough," she said, her voice hollow and deliciously taunting. "What," she drew her nails up along the trapped girl's jaw line, "do you want from me?"

The girl spit at her and Cadenza moved effortlessly out of the way, completely unfazed. "You know!" she cried, tears still falling like rain. "You _bitch_. You _know_!"

"Oh, just because that's _true_ doesn't mean you have to _say_ it," Cadenza said wryly. Behind her, Laura landed on the ground beside Sabrina, cocking her hip and tilting her head contemplatively.

"Laura?" Cadenza asked without turning away from her games. The other fairy shrugged, shifting her weight to the other side.

"They're off the deep end, naturally," she said dismissively, waving her hand as if brushing away some dust. "Anything you've gotten out of them so far is all you're gonna get."

"Nngh, figures," Cadenza said, frowning. "Sabrina, you wanna finish this? It's a little early in the morning to get our hands all bloody, don't you think?"

_Bloody_? That was too much. Pushing herself over the banister, Bloom fell to the ground, landing in a crouch with her Believix wings flung out behind her dramatically. She rose as slowly as she could manage, her eyes on fire and her fists clenched.

"You're going to take these people's _lives_?" Bloom asked acidly, glaring daggers at Cadenza. "You're going to make them _bleed_?" She shook her head slowly, eyes never leaving the other fairy's. "You're less than the lowest life form. You're _awful_. You're _worse_. You're—"

"Missing the bigger picture," Laura cut in suddenly, her eyes dark as she appeared beside her companion. "If you knew the half of it…"

Cadenza's hand grasping hers seemed to stop Laura in her tracks as the other girl shook her head. "Don't bother," she said softly. "She wouldn't understand."

"I wouldn't understand _what_?" Bloom shouted at the top of her lungs, fury boiling up in her. Suddenly all the Winx Believix were behind her, forming a crude sort of arrow of defense and wearing matching determined, angry expressions.

"You can't talk to her like that!" Stella shouted, surprisingly alert all of a sudden. "You can't talk to any of us like that! I don't care who you are, or who you _think_ you are, you just—you don't have that right!"

Musa nodded, her eyes narrow. "It doesn't matter where you came from, you're on _our_ turf now and we stick up for each other! But then I don't guess _you_ would understand that, _would_ you?"

A sickening _crack_ shook through the air and Flora cried out, whimpering as she raised her hands to her mouth and turned violently away. Bloom dared to flick her eyes toward the noise and immediately wished she hadn't; the fairy who had been begging for her life only moments ago lay in an unmoving heap on the group, her chest messily busted open and bleeding all over the grass. Sabrina—Allison, Bloom reminded herself, they _knew_ this girl, they had _taught_ this girl, _trusted_ this girl—had her fists drawn in close to her body, having obviously just used her trademark magic to manipulate the other girl's form from afar.

"You don't," Sabrina said, so quietly they all had to lean in a little to catch her words, "have _any_. _Idea_. The things we've seen would haunt your nightmares to the day you _die_." She bit out the last word with such venom that Tecna, who stood closest to her, took a small step back.

In the midst of their exchange, the wizard had been dropped to his knees and clutched his head, crying in great heaving gasps. Vomit splattered the ground around him as he gagged, clawing at his skull. The Winx girls recoiled, horrified and disgusted, as the furious fairies surrounded the wizard with hate in their eyes and the twists of their lips.

Cadenza shook her head disapprovingly. "Despicable," she said lowly as Laura raised her hand in an almost casual gesture. The pale blue light at her palm burst before the wizard's eyes and his expression was transformed in an instant; the screaming, clawing, vomiting, howling stopped at once as pure bliss fell over his features, his eyes wide and understanding and his lips curved into an amazed smile—

On his back, he was dead in less than an instant.

Bloom felt bile rising in her own throat, too horrified to speak but too transfixed to leave. Flora cried openly as Aisha groped blindly for her shoulders, trying to wrap her in something like a comforting hug even as she couldn't tear her eyes away from the sickening scene before them. Musa bit down on her own fingers in an attempt to control herself and Stella plainly fainted; even Tecna had a greenish tint to her face, covering her mouth with both of her hands.

The other fairies turned to face them in unison, identical challenging glares on their faces.

"Are you sure you want to get yourselves involved here?" Laura asked, her flat voice a dim mismatch to her raging gaze.

"You might want to learn a little more about what goes on at these parties before you invite yourselves," Cadenza said tonelessly.

"At least you can't say we haven't given you adequate warning from now on," Sabrina said, by far the warmest of the three but still somehow mockingly self-righteous.

Grasping Laura's hand again, Cadenza led the three out through Alfea's front gates, none of them looking back. The bodies lay where they had been left, rotting reminders of the fight that was slowly playing itself out around them.

Tecna pointed up and the girls followed her direction. Rows of students were clinging to banisters of the balconies above them, each uniquely horrified and uniformly frightened.

Bloom coughed on her first attempt at speaking and Musa stepped forward, raising her arm.

"Back to your rooms, everyone. Classes don't begin for another few hours yet."

Not a single girl moved.


	10. Walk Upon This Fragile World

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**walk upon this fragile world**

"Well," Bloom said miserably, flopping down on the plush couch of their common room and drawing her still-pajama-clad knees up to her chest. "What do we do now?"

The girls were identically at a loss. Once they had finally (finally) managed to shoo all their students back to bed (if a single one was actually asleep it would be a miracle), they had, by silent, mutual agreement, met back in the shared space to talk about what they had just witnessed. As it happened, no one really wanted to bring it up.

A quivering mess in her overstuffed armchair, Flora pressed an already-damp cloth to her tear-stained face and pressed herself close to Aisha, the latter mindlessly stroking her arm as she remained lost in her own universe. Stella was barely waking up, Musa and Aisha having laid her down on the couch opposite Bloom before going around to direct the students, and Musa herself was kneeling on the floor, her head leaned back against Bloom's couch and her eyes tightly shut. Tecna, of course, was on her computer, but unlike every other time they had ever seen her, she seemed to be typing mindlessly. Pages and pages flashed across the screen and were deleted almost as quickly, the text flying by illegibly.

The stench of blood clung to all of them, hanging foreign and bitter in the air, a tangy, unwelcome reminder of the things that had seen, the words the other fairies had thrown in their faces, the challenge suddenly rearing itself up before them. Stella pulled herself up with a hand braced on the back of the sofa, pressing her other palm to her forehead and raking her sweaty bangs away from her face.

"What do we do?" she asked, her voice broken and her eyes downturned. Bloom suddenly burst into tears, wrapping her arms around her own head and hiding her face against her thighs.

"I don't know!" she wailed. Stella blinked the haziness from her eyes and crawled to the junction of her sofa and Bloom's, reaching out to stroke her friend's hair. Bloom shrugged her off jerkily, wracking sobs making her shoulders tremble, and Stella fell back into the cushions with an angry pout on her face.

"We have to do _something_," Tecna said, her eyes still trained on her flashing computer screen and her fingers still flying pointlessly over the keys. Aisha nodded, her gaze unfocused as she continued to pet Flora.

The nature fairy sniffled, finally raising her head. "We have to stop them," she said as the flow of her tears began to stem. "I didn't realize they—I mean, I guess I—I—did they…they're _killing people_."

And just like that, the room was divided in two. Aisha's hand froze halfway down Flora's back and Tecna's typing stuttered as all the windows on her screen closed; Musa's eyes opened, bare slits, and she tilted her head towards the ground. Bloom let out another wail and Stella pushed herself as close to the edge of the couch as she could get as Flora looked around the room blankly, desperately wanting them all to stay united and knowing that they were about as far from it as possible.

"We have to talk to Allison," Musa said distantly, rolling her head to the other side. Tecna nodded.

"We have to find out who Laura and Cadenza really are."

Silence again, broken only by Bloom's gradually waning cries. Aisha suddenly frowned deeply, standing and making her way to Tecna's computer.

"Can you use that software again? The…the face recognition stuff you used to find Sabrina?"

Tecna looked offended but nodded, turning back to her monitor and pushing some buttons. "Of course; why, who are we matching with who?"

"Do you have pictures of Laura and Cadenza? On your PDA or anything?"

"From the battle just now, I have one of Cadenza." Tecna raised her fingers to the screen and pushed some windows aside, tapping away at the keyboard with her other hand. "Here, here it is. I'm afraid that's all I've got, though."

Aisha scrutinized the picture carefully for a moment and shook her head. "Not Cadenza, I want one of Laura."

Tecna grimaced, baring her teeth slightly. "Ooh, sorry, I don't think I have a good one."

"What do you mean, you don't have a good one? But you do _have_ one?"

Tecna shrugged awkwardly. "Sort of. This is her here in the background, right?" She pointed to a picture of Cadenza whirling in midair, her long dark hair swishing in a graceful arc. Behind her, half-visible and looking down at the ground, was Laura, her eyes open wide and her hands glowing bright blue.

"Yeah, definitely," Aisha confirmed with a sharp nod. She was clearly on a roll, or at least thought she was, and edged even closer to the monitor. "Is it enough for an ID?"

"It depends," Tecna hedged. "How clear is the other picture? It would need to be a completely frontal view with no obstructions or speed lines."

"No problem, it's a student I'm thinking of," Aisha said, waving off Tecna's concerns. "We should have a stock photo of her in the file."

At that, even Bloom looked up, her red eyes blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear. The thought of yet another student being one of those awful, awful fairies…

Musa rocked forward on the balls of her feet, standing and walking over as well. "Who is it?" she asked without looking away from the images flashing around on the screen. "Someone you've seen around campus, do you know her name?"

"Delilah of Aetas," Aisha said with just the slightest waver in her voice. "She's in my class and I think Bloom's, too."

Bloom shook her head weakly and sniffled. "No," she said thickly, "no, no way. Delilah's the biggest sweetheart in the entire _year_, she—works hard, always tries to improve herself, gets on great with the other girls… Not her, she's too…too _good_."

"Too good an actress, maybe," Musa said wryly as Tecna opened a window containing the freshman student registry.

Stella and Flora craned their necks to look at the image brought up onscreen: a young-looking girl with wide almond eyes, peering out from under long, dark hair with her chin tilted just slightly down, a tiny show of nerves. Stella made a scoffing sound and Flora glanced at her skeptically.

"She'd be really pretty if she just had some confidence in herself," Stella said. "Held her head up high, got out from under those bangs… She just needs someone to give her a boost, I think, someone to believe in her."

Tecna made a disapproving noise and clicked open the image-matching software. "No guarantees," she warned as she inserted the two images. Sure enough, the match came up at four points and the computer deemed it "Unacceptable." Aisha growled low in her throat and smacked her open palm against the desktop; Tecna made a sheltering gesture towards her monitor and gave her a dirty look, but Aisha wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention.

"Four points," she said, sounding desperately hopeful. "That's something, right? We can take that, can't we?"

"Aisha, we'd be getting a four-point match if they had the same _hair_ style, which from the looks of it, they do." Tecna shook her head preemptively. "And no, waist-length dark brown isn't that unusual, so no, we can't take that as evidence, either."

One of Flora's potted plants was swept to the floor as Aisha swung her arm out through the air, gritting her teeth and swearing at the unfairness and injustice of it all. Flora's fear and sorrow turned quickly to uncharacteristic bitterness as she magically restored the flowers to their rightful place, encasing them in a shimmering bubble of a shield. She opened her mouth to say something undoubtedly scathing when Bloom turned and saw the already-played-out scene, trying to stop it before it really started.

"Hey now," she said, trying to be soothing and coming off accidentally patronizing. "Let's not get mad at each other; no one ever said this would be easy, but we're the Winx Club! We can stand together through anything. That's what we're all about, right girls?"

Aisha glared at her pleading eyes and Flora glared at Aisha in a snappish, vicious circle. Stella thumped her hands down in the couch cushions and pushed herself up to stand in the middle of the not-yet-a-fight.

"Get a hold of yourselves!" she shouted, stamping her foot. "Girls!" Her tone turned to a plea, friends-stay-friends, this was _important_, this was a _test_. "We need to be _together_. We can't be fighting each other, not when we need to be fighting this bunch of nasty bad guys, this Meadowsweet group, _and_ these fairies. We need to remember that we're all _friends_. This stuff _happens_, we all have tempers, we all have limits, but we need to _stay together_."

Almost incredulous, Aisha sat back down on the sofa with a soft "fwump* and laid her arms down on her knees, staring at Stella blankly. Flora blinked rapidly and stared down at her newly protected potted plant, her expression slowly morphing into one of apologetic bewilderment at her outburst. Tecna was, for once, completely still at her desk, her computer all but abandoned, though Musa's eyes remained fixed distractedly on the glowing screen. Bloom huffed a sigh as she raked a hand through her hair, closing her eyes briefly.

"So," she said finally. "Tecna…say something smart."

Tecna jerked back slightly at the unexpected call, but nodded and reached around blindly for her keyboard. "Right, so…well." Biting her lip, she tried to shake off her unease and tapped the keyboard pointedly. "Aisha had a point, kind of, when she said a four point match was something. It hasn't narrowed down the list of fairies with much success, but it has narrowed it down a little. Across all classes, there are thirty-seven girls currently enrolled at Alfea with hair that matches Laura's, and adjusting the list to account for the possibility of hair growth in a Believix fairy, that increases the number to fifty-nine. In addition to Delilah, there's…well, here." She turned to the computer screen and brought up a list of names. "We can easily access each student photo from this list," she said, touching a name and bringing up the corresponding photograph as evidence.

Musa hummed. "Allison is enrolled as a first-year, even though she's gotta be older. I bet that if the other two are students here, they're first-years as well."

Tecna clicked on a link at the left side of the screen and the list blinked, then shortened. "That brings it down to fourteen," she said, drawing her finger down the list.

"I just had a thought," Stella said slowly. "Delilah is from Aetas, right? Tecna, didn't you say that was in the Agnosco dimension?"

"It's the Agnosco system," Tecna corrected, "but yes." She called up a much longer list alongside the student registrar, pointing to the word "Aetas." "Here's the list of planets—or at least, the most complete list I could find."

Stella nodded, leaning over in her seat to skim the list. "Uh-huh… Can you see how many students from that list of fourteen are from Agnosco? I mean, if we've never heard of it, there shouldn't be many."

Nodding, Tecna touched the screen and dragged the list of planets on top of the one of students; the two blinked rapidly, faded, and reappeared as one list containing only five names.

"Delilah, of course," Tecna said, looking at the list with narrowed eyes. "Allison, but we already knew that. And then three more: Callista, Riley, and Dayquiria."

"Callista," Stella said at once. "She's in my class, she's a total slacker. Definitely spending nights up late; I bet it's because she can't handle being a nasty fairy fighting these jerks by night and a serious student by day. Come to think of it," she went on with a slightly wild look in her eyes, "I bet Allison is keeping her grades high for all those three, and the other two are slackers with GPAs just high enough to keep them enrolled. She probably teaches them everything they need to know, if they don't know it already."

"Interesting theory," Bloom said skeptically, "but why wouldn't Allison just let them copy her work? They've gotta be in contact enough for it to be pretty easy."

"They're all in several different classes," Flora pointed out. "Probably to avoid anyone being able to come to that conclusion."

Tecna punched up a picture of Callista, an average-looking girl with the long, sweeping dark hair they were tracking. Bloom fixated immediately on her wide eyes—they looked amazingly innocent, almost naïve, almost…suspicious.

"She's the one," Bloom said coldly, pointing. Flora looked up at her a bit hesitantly, biting her lower lip. Bloom flashed her a glance and frowned. "What?"

"Well, are you sure?" Flora asked haltingly. "I mean…their eyes are shaped differently and I'm pretty sure Laura is a little thinner, and her skin is a little darker, and… You know, I just wondered if you were maybe finding things that aren't really there because this is the first real lead we've gotten in awhile."

Aisha nodded. "She's got a point, Bloom."

Bloom only shook her head violently. "No, I'm sure of it!" she said with some force, leaning over the desk to get her face closer to the monitor. "I mean, we've all been at all these battles, we've all seen them—come on! That's her, I know it!"

"I'm pretty sure it's not," Stella said vaguely, crossing her arms and leaning back on her heels. Bloom turned on her angrily, her eyes blazing.

"Who, then?" she asked, the challenge in her voice more than obvious. "Riley? Please, she's so weak she can barely even make an energy ball, let alone do all the physical fighting Laura does. Her magic is—it's pathetic, is what it is! Dayquiria? Yeah right, I've never even seen that girl _fight_! She's such a pacifist it's, it's, it's idealistic, she would never think these things that Laura and the others go on about all the time."

Flora lays her hand on Bloom's back in what looks like an attempt at a soothing gesture. "Bloom," she says quietly, adding to the impression. "It's okay for the first answer to be wrong. We just have to keep investigating."

Bloom shook her head violently, squeezing her eyes shut. "No! We have to—"

"Bloom," Stella cut in. "Allison's a good actress, right? Laura probably is, too, if not even better. What could be a better disguise than a weakling or an idealistic pacifist?"

"Dayquiria does look almost exactly like her," Tecna said, all business again, as she held the two pictures up for comparison. "Her eyes are the right shape and color, her hair is the same length, her skin is the same color—I think it is, anyway, these pictures are a little pixilated but the palate says they're at least really close. They're about the same body type—both average height, thin, faces evenly proportioned, slightly round but very linear…"

"Well, then," Bloom said with fresh determination, pounding her fist down on the desktop, "we've got some work to do, haven't we?"


	11. No One's Around to Blame

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**no one's around to blame**

Class passed in a blur of facts and dates; Musa found herself far too distracted to care when Dana obviously dozed off by the window and Evangelia and Charisma started passing notes. She rattled off information monotonously, not really surprised that Ioana spent more time flipping through the textbook than listening to her speak, waiting for the period to end and feeling butterflies rise unexpectedly in her stomach. Allison remained silent.

The bell rang hours later.

_Finally_.

"Dayquiria," she said as firmly as she could manage. The girl paused, halfway out of her desk, looking up perplexedly, but Musa plowed on. "I'd like to speak to you for a moment, please."

Flashing a defiant glare to Allison (very unprofessional, but dammit, they were past that point in this game), Musa was only a little surprised to see her ignoring the situation completely. Were they wrong about Dayquiria? No, they couldn't be. The image matching software had said. Hadn't it? It may as well have. Allison just didn't care, the little psychopath.

Musa shook her head and rolled her shoulders, beckoning the slightly frightened young girl towards her desk as the other students filed out. Allison had admitted right away to her double identity; even if she _was_ a better actor, Dayquiria would have no reason not to do the same.

"Yes ma'am?" Dayquiria said timidly, hanging back from Musa's desk. Musa waited for Wanda and Nahla to close the door behind themselves before she started speaking.

"The game's up, Laura," Musa said icily, leaning forward to look as imposing as possible and secretly delighting in the fear sparking in Dayquiria's eyes. "As soon as we find out who Cadenza is, you and your little gang are gonna be out of here so fast, and you're taking your _Meadowsweet_ with you."

Dayquiria's shoulders began to shake—from laughter? Musa was definitely not in the mood for mockery at this point (maybe if she was the one in control, maybe).

Wait—

"I—Miss Musa," Dayquiria said, her voice starting to shake as well, "I…I don't know what you're talking about, I really don't. Did I do something wrong?"

"Oh," Musa stage-whispered, "you're good. Maybe you need the rest of the teaching staff around to help loosen your tongue."

"But…I…I don't—"

Musa flipped open her phone and punched the buttons with more force than necessary. "Bloom?" she said, unable to keep the snap from her voice. "Get the rest of the girls to the faculty lounge right away. I think we've got some work to do."

---

Twenty minutes later, the entire group was assembled in the lounge and circled around Dayquiria in what they hoped was an imposing (but maybe not threatening) fashion. She hadn't cracked—yet—but did look on the verge of tears, which Aisha considered to be progress.

"Dayquiria," Tecna said in an attempt at tonelessly rational, "we have several points of matched recognition between the student photograph of _you_ and a recently acquired photograph of Laura, one of the fairies involved in the Meadowsweet incidents."

"She's _not me_," Dayquiria insisted (again), fisting her hands in her lap. "I don't know what you're talking about, I don't understand!"

"You _don't_ understand," Musa cut in. "We have the evidence. Why won't you just confess?"

Dayquiria's brow furrowed deeply, her eyes creasing and glittering with tears. "I want to go home," she said in a very small voice. Immediately Flora cut in, biting her lip and pressing comforting hands to the poor girl's shoulders.

"Dayquiria," she said solemnly, bending somewhat to prompt the other girl to look her in the eye. "Are you Laura?"

Pressing her quivering lips into a thin line in a sudden change in her previously desperate (but loud) insistence about her identity, Dayquiria's burst of overacting was completely lost on Flora as the sympathetic fairy looked earnestly into her eyes. "No," she said, broken. Flora stood up straight, not moving her hands, and turned side to side to look at the others.

"We need to talk about this," she said to Dayquiria, patting her shoulders. "How about you wait in my room, just down the hall, and we'll get you in a few minutes?"

Dayquiria nodded. "Thank you, Miss Flora," she said quietly, standing and walking out with long strides and her head tilted down, eyes on the floor. As soon as the door was closed, every other fairy in the room was glaring daggers at Flora, but she impressively stood her ground and Stella was even a little taken aback. All at once, they practically manhandled Flora into Dayquiria's vacated seat, even though she went without much of a fight; it was obvious what was coming.

Bloom took a deep breath, ready to head up the interrogation because, well, that was her (self-appointed) _job_. Flora looked up at her almost defiantly (but not quite), ready to defend her decision.

"Flora," Aisha said tiredly, surprising them all. "Why did you _do_ that?"

Flora's gaze snapped to Aisha, her eyes wide and concerned. She took a deep breath before speaking: "I don't think our evidence is as concrete as we'd like it to be." Her eyes flashed to Bloom and then back to Aisha. "I think we're too desperate for answers, we're finding them in places where there aren't any."

Bloom's eyes darkened as she crossed her arms over her chest, throwing her hips out and arching over Flora. "Why would we do that?" she asked pointedly. "We've never had that problem in the past; we've always searched for _answers_, not…made-up facts."

"Exactly," Flora said, leaning forward to combat the challenge. "We've never _had_ this problem before. The Trix, Valtor, even the Black Circle just dropped their motives, their goals, their _identities_ right into our laps!"

Bloom's mouth gaped in shock for a moment before she recovered herself and went on. "So what," she said disbelievingly, "you think that now that the answers aren't being _given_ to me, I'm just gonna make them up as I go? That's a pretty low accusation, Flora, especially from you!"

Focused on Flora as she was, Bloom missed the flower fairy's scandalized expression being mirrored on Stella's, Musa's, Tecna's, and Aisha's faces behind her. When Flora didn't continue their argument, she settled back a little smugly and tried to keep the corners of her mouth from quirking up. "Well?" she said confrontationally. Flora only closed her own mouth and shook her head slowly.

"We're in this together, Bloom," Musa said quietly, not touching her.

Immediately horrified, Bloom spun to face her other friends, a retort on the tip of her tongue. "You don't think I know that?" she asked. "I could never survive without all of you behind me, we're a team!"

"Right now, it doesn't seem like you think that," Tecna said.

"Of course I do!" Bloom cried, turning to look at Stella for conformation. The other girl only looked away, her eyes half-lidded. Bloom took a stumbling step back; "Stella!"

The sun fairy shrugged uneasily. "It—Bloom, you do sound kind of like you're putting yourself in the middle of this. It's not really about you."

"It's not at _all_ about you," Aisha clarified, her face coloring slightly (from shyness fear anger couldn't say). "We're not just supporting players in the Bloom show, you know, we have our own—lives."

"And this," Musa said, making a sweeping gesture to encompass the whole situation they were involved in, "this isn't really about _any_ of us. We've put ourselves in the middle here because we want to protect our home and the people we love, but let's face it, we don't know what we're doing. We don't know who these guys are, these Meadowsweet people _or_ these other three fairies. We just…put ourselves in and don't want to get ourselves out."

Bloom stepped back to fall on one of the abandoned couches, Flora's interrogation all but forgotten. Pressing her palm to her forehead, she combed her fingers through the slightly sweat-dampened hairs there and tried not to look at any of the other girls. How could they, how _could_ they, after all she had ever done for them, all she had ever given up…

She hadn't really given up a lot, had she?

No, not really. Coming to Alfea had been one of the best decisions of her life; she had met Sky, her future husband… Five—no, ten of the best friends she could ever ask for besides, who always stood up for her, always stuck their necks out for her, did everything they could to protect her and help her find her real family… Sure, the Trix had stolen her Dragon Fire, but her adventures to get it back had done nothing but help her in the long run, and she had gotten it back without too much of a problem. Sure, Darkar had brainwashed her into turning on her friends, but that had only served to solidify her relationship with Sky, when all was said and done. And sure, Valtor had—well, he had almost killed her, but really, they had all gotten rid of him, one of the most powerful and threatening evil forces in all of Magix, as a team, and he was gone forever with their bond never the stronger.

But what had been key to all those victories? _Teamwork_. They had all relied on one another and one another's love and affection to get through the hard times, to beat the darkness and the bad guys and live another day or two. So what if she had been the target of more than a few of the attacks? She was a liability to her friends more than anything else. Where in the world did she get off singling herself out so starkly? Because she had the power of the Dragon Fire inside of her? Yeah, that had always served them so well, keeping them all safe. Their Believix powers, their current power of choice, was dependent on _others_, on making _other people_ believe in them, not in believing in herself (as she had always been taught was her strength). They were all on equal footing with their Believix magic in Alfea, where of course everyone believed in fairies with all their hearts.

She beckoned vaguely towards the door. "Get Dayquiria back in here," she said hollowly. "You're right, Flora, let her go. She's—she's not the one."

"Now wait just a minute!" Aisha said brazenly, stepping between the two. "Just because this girl gave us some tears and begged a little, we're gonna believe her just like that? I'd like to stick to the photograph evidence, if it's not too much to ask."

"All we have is one grainy photograph and some pixilated skin tone samples that 'might' be right," Stella challenged. "I'd say her performance was a little more than just an act, personally."

"You just don't wanna consider that we might need to punish some _students_ for _killing people_," Musa snapped, leaning back arrogantly. Stella turned on her and the argument skipped right back to where it started.

"I," Stella said haughtily, "am not even going to dignify that with a response."

"Girls," Flora said tiredly, head tilted to rest on one crooked hand. "We've already been down this road once today, let's not go down it again."

Aisha threw up her hands submissively, shaking her head. "You're right," she conceded at once, stepping between Musa and Stella, "you're right, it's all good. We're not doing this again, I promise."

Musa and Stella traded one last dirty look before both relented and Tecna tried to hide a small, ironic smile. Flora huffed a loud sigh and pushed herself out of the chair she had been shoved into, stepping toward the door.

"So," she said unnecessarily, "I'm going to get Dayquiria and explain that this was all an honest mistake." Bloom nodded sullenly, sinking back into the cushions.

"Sure."

---

Dayquiria stared at all of them disbelievingly.

"An honest mistake?" she deadpanned, arms crossed over her chest. "I…don't even know what to say. I really, really don't."

"We're so sorry," Flora said for the umpteenth time, clasping her hands. "You'll receive free extensions for all homework due tomorrow in all our classes for all this time we've taken up, of course." Musa nodded sagely and Tecna looked a little skeptical but nodded as well. Dayquiria only shook her head, yet again.

"I just…wow."

"We're really sorry," Bloom added in this time, leaning forward nervously. "It won't happen again."

"You're not affiliated with those fairies, right?" Aisha asked, half-casually. Flora shoved her a little and she scowled as Dayquiria looked both scandalized and suspicious.

"Absolutely not," she said firmly. "I don't even know who they all are; I mean their names, even, not their real identities—I guess that's what you're trying to find out, huh? I mean, good luck with that and all." She shifted around in her chair, glancing toward the door and back. "Can I—uh, can I go?"

Flora leapt to her feet, opening the door. "Of course, sweetie, go ahead. We're really sorry."

Dayquiria paused halfway into the hall scratching her elbow nervously. "Uh…it's okay, I guess. I…okay, bye."

As soon as the young girl was out of viewing range, Flora closed the door and Stella flopped back onto the couch, her legs kicking up carelessly as she groaned.

"Great," she bemoaned, pressing her fists into her eyes. "Well, back to square one."

Tecna skimmed her list (down to three). "Delilah, Callista, Riley," she rattled off. Bloom rolled her eyes.

"I don't believe it'd be any of them," she said coolly. "Delilah's a prima diva, Callista's a slacker, and Riley's a weakling. None of them fit with Sabrina, much less Cadenza."

"Well," Aisha said, "it's all we've got to go on. Let's see who's free right now."


	12. She Don't Wander In Here

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**she don't wander in here  
**

Two hours and three rounds of super-sweet Red Devils later, the girls were no closer to tracking down any of their three targets: Delilah had, or so the gossip train went, shipped off to Magix with some friends of hers to get in some last minute shopping before all the best stores closed for the day; Callista was "somewhere" on campus doing "something" with a girl named Meliora, evidently quite scandalously but not at all surprising to anyone who knew either of them; Riley was nowhere to be found by anyone.

"This," Bloom declared loudly, slapping her hand down on the table and rattling the emptied shot glasses, "is hopeless."

"Let's talk to Lola again!" Stella cried out gleefully, pointing up into the air with both hands. Musa nodded fervently, leaning into Stella's space.

"_Yes_," she said earnestly. "Let's talk to _Loooo­_-la." She giggled, rubbing under her nose. "_Lo_-la."

"I always said she was too nice," Bloom mock-whispered to Aisha, who—at about a tenth the inebriation level of her three friends—appeared to be trying her best to keep out of the conversation. She and Flora exchanged a tired glance and both sighed an unspoken agreement: No more drinking. Ever.

Tecna nodded somewhat seriously. "We could," she said thoughtfully. "We don't know much about her, and what with the Meadowsweet attack the other day, we never did get to checking up on her roommate situation." She shrugged. "Who knows, she may even be able to tell us something about Riley's whereabouts."

"Or what Callista and Meliora are doing," Flora added. "I hope it's nothing dangerous, but if they're defacing campus somewhere, we're going to have to stop it."

Aisha and Musa exchanged a look, and Musa dissolved into giggles as Aisha's face flushed. Flora blinked and tilted her head. "What?"

"Never mind," Aisha said hurriedly, waving her hand through the air. Shoving her faintly glowing palm towards the three drunkards, she drew her fingers back towards herself and muttered some kind of spell, extracting the alcohol from their bloodstreams; being a fairy of liquids had its practical advantages as well as those gained during battle.

Bloom shook her head and pressed her palms to her temples; Stella mirrored her actions and Musa smacked herself in the forehead. "Damn," she hissed, "how much was _in_ those?"

"You don't want to know," Tecna advised. "But Stella, that wasn't a bad idea."

Stella stared at her blankly. "Idea?"

"Talking to Lola," she went on, expecting her friend's confusion. "We never got around to looking into her…well, anything, really."

Flora stood to gather the glasses as Aisha took custody of the alcohol and fruit juices. "I still think she's suspicious," the liquid fairy said stubbornly. Flora shrugged uncomfortably and Musa glanced between them; as much as she was sure no one wanted this to become another Thing between them, it was sort of hard to keep it from going in that direction. It was, in fact, a wonder the two were such good friends; they were nearly polar opposite personality types, and as much experience as Flora had with friends whose identities nearly opposed hers—she was bonded to Chatta, for crying out loud—the fact that she would seek out, and spend so much time with, such a brash, forceful fairy as Aisha was a little…surprising.

Tecna, of all people, stood abruptly and stepped toward the table to scoop up any last lingering debris that the others had missed in their swift cleanup. "It does make sense," she went on as though Aisha had never said anything. "That we should check her out, that is. Since she isn't in any of our classes, none of us know anything about her."

"If she's not taking classes, why is she here?" Stella asked skeptically. Bloom nodded, her brow furrowed, but stayed silent. "I mean," Stella went on, "sure, the accommodations are great and the food's free with tuition, but still. Why go to all that trouble to enroll and all if she's just gonna hang around like a leech?"

"Dunno," Musa said thoughtfully, frowning into her tented fingers. "We oughta catch up with her again."

Aisha shrugged. "How about now?"

---

"Lola!" Musa banged on the arching door. "It's Miss Musa, I need to ask you something!"

Shuffling noises, the definite sound of voices—three?—and the door opened easily, Lola standing there properly with her hands folded in front of her. "Yes ma'am?" was her canned response; a spark of anger, of all things, flares up and out in Aisha's chest, and Stella's temper was clearly edging up on her (grit teeth narrowed eyes flared nostrils clenching fists).

"Who are your roommates?" Musa asked pointedly, gesturing to the closed door to their right. Lola looked appropriately perplexed, her posture never faltering as her brow furrowed.

"I…thought we had been over this already," she said hesitantly, a shadow of confusion passing over her features. Musa's smirk turned snide and Flora hung back close to Tecna.

"Not to our satisfaction, I'm afraid," Musa said authoritatively. "Now, what can you tell us about Delilah of Speculum, Callista of Maeror, and Riley of Videlicet?"

Something in Lola's expression changed suddenly; not a lot, not terribly noticeably, but immediately, for sure. She wasn't the sweet, submissive little researcher she had been last time, nor was she the naïve child she seemed to be as she defended the privacy rights of whatever school records chose to keep her roommate situation private. Her gaze became almost calculating as she thought fast, her posture still never faltering.

"I know of them," she said eventually, the pause not actually as long as it seemed. "I've seen them around. What do you want to know?"

Tecna's gaze slid across the room and she smirked at a photograph hanging over Lola's bed—part of a set of three, in fact, all artful images of fairies taken from behind to clearly show their gloriously bright wings; not much else was visible through the shine and sparkle, but every fine detail of the wings was distinct and brilliantly colorful. She pointed to the leftmost one, twirling her finger around.

"That's Sabrina, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically. She may have needed photographs to perform technical comparisons on her computer, but her equally precise memory allowed her to easily compare the two in her head. Lola's expression immediately changed much more drastically, but not to the shock or fear Tecna had expected. She looked downright _smug_.

"It is," she said simply, her posture still stiffly polite. "A friend of mine."

"And that," Aisha jumped in, pointing to the leftmost picture (weirdly accusing), "that's Laura, isn't it? Don't deny it, it's obvious."

Lola arched her eyebrows, her expression relaxed and controlled (controlling). "I've denied nothing," she said. "The décor of my room has not changed since you were last present, I don't think." (It was true; the incredibly Zen atmosphere was as clean and Feng Shui as any of them remembered, from the beautiful orchids, Sweet William, birds of paradise, Alstroemeria, and scores of leaves and mosses scattered around the room in square containers and glass vases, to the gentle waterfall that seemed to be coming right out of the wall.)

"You know them," Stella challenged. Lola nodded at once.

"I do." She shrugged, rolling her entire shoulder span in the motion. "I find that their charming wings add a certain mysticism which can't quite be attained with the flowers alone. A focal point in an otherwise fairly…monotonous room."

Monotonous? There were a lot of flowers, sure, but they were all so pretty (color arrangement matching everything) that it was far from _monotonous_. Flora was about to point that out when she noticed: Lola didn't mean that the wings broke the monotony of the color, she meant the monotony of the _theme_. Nature was everywhere, from the flowers to the waterfall to the cats that appeared and disappeared from time to time like little spirits, but the wings were constant and a reminder that this was a room that belonged to a _fairy_, not some lovely accidental oasis in the middle of an otherwise hectic school. Of course, a fairy of nature herself, Flora didn't consider the theme to be especially monotonous, but she could understand where Lola was coming from; even her own room didn't have quite so many natural elements as this one.

"You don't like things to be too similar," Flora guessed, edging out to the front of the group. Lola smiled at her, almost-but-not-quite patronizing.

"Where's the fun in that?" she asked. "Every murder of crows needs a bluebird now and again."

What a weird turn of phrase.

"Uh, right," Musa said tentatively. She shook her head and pointed to the framed pictures again. "Anyway, what are Sabrina's and Laura's wings doing on your wall?"

Lola laughed quietly, one hand covering her mouth in an obnoxiously delicate motion. "Pictures of their wings," she corrected. "I imagine they'd be in a right state if I'd ripped the wings off their backs, don't you?"

"In any case," Tecna said impatiently, goading her on. Lola smirked again.

"I am of the opinion that Believix wings are the most striking of the fairy forms," she said casually, "and those three are the only fairies whose wings I have been able to obtain photographs of. Well," she amended, "that's not entirely true; they are the only ones, however, who willingly posed for such…artistic shots."

"How did you trick them into that?" Aisha asked derisively, frowning at Lola's answering (definitely patronizing) grin.

"Didn't you hear?" she asked. "They willingly posed, of course. Merely an exercise in creativity; Sabrina is quite the artist in her spare time."

That threw them a little; these fairies actually had _outside interests_? Even something as normal as _art_? And it didn't even seem too weird or outsider-ish; stylized, sure, but nothing harmful or dangerous, nothing trying to make a political statement.

"What about Laura?" Stella couldn't keep herself from asking. Lola tilted her head a little, thinking.

"Laura is quite the actress," she admitted. "Not only is she professionally accomplished, she's quite talented. The two don't always go together, of course."

Bloom could appreciate that; Earth was full of people who filled one criteria but not the other, sometimes to frustrating degrees. Unfortunately, it didn't tell them anything new about the girl except that Delilah, Callista, and Riley were all still in the running, assuming Laura was acting at whatever her cover was.

"So there are pictures of her on the 'net," Tecna said immediately. "If she's a professional, she should have headshots, at least, right?"

"I would think you wouldn't need to ask, around here," Lola said breezily. "But things are a little different in Agnosco; nothing is particularly publicized on the Internet. Word of mouth is far more popular and far more persuasive; people aren't likely to believe propaganda on a corruptible medium like the 'net so no one bothers to use it."

_Damn_. So close.

"How about Cadenza?" Stella asked on a whim. Lola frowned thoughtfully and shook her head.

"How about her?" she asked. "Do you have any suspicions of her identity?"

The girls exchanged abashed glances and Musa finally admitted that they didn't; Lola nodded sagely.

"She's the most secretive, I gather."

"Well, Allison certainly admitted her identity right away," Tecna agreed.

"Allison?" Lola asked. Bloom frowned.

"Sabrina," Flora supplied.

"I see…" Lola trailed off. Her eyes slowly passed over the girls and landed, conveniently enough, on the wall clock. She gasped sharply. "Oh—oh, I'm so sorry, but I really have to finish this report I'm working on tonight and it's already so late!"

Stella glanced at the clock. 8:17. She raised her eyebrows over her shuttered eyes and Lola shrugged, surprisingly awkwardly.

"I'm sorry," she explained, "but I try to be in bed by 9:00 at the very latest; I wake up at 5:00 every morning, and I need to make sure I get enough sleep, so…well. 8:00 is better, but this report is just—it's a challenge."

"Of course," Flora said soothingly. "We'll go right now, don't worry."

Aisha and Musa exchanged skeptical looks, but they all followed Flora's lead and drifted out into the hallway. The door closed as soon as they were gone.

"Well," Stella said at once, "that was weird."

Bloom shrugged. "I don't know, she might be useful. Helpful to our investigations, anyway."

"Or she might be on their side," Musa put in. Bloom shrugged noncommittally.

"She sure seems close to them, at least," Aisha said, pleased that her suspicions were finally being supported. "Anyway, now that we're kind of back to square one with the whole Laura thing, plus we've got Cadenza to worry about, I say we get back to the dorm and get to bed."

Stella raised her hands and led the way. "Hear, hear."

Musa rolled her eyes.


	13. Dream Yourself Along Another Day

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**dream yourself along another day**

One thing they hadn't counted on (maybe a little stupidly) was something unexpected happening. Of course, it was only a matter of time, if one paused to consider what had been going on since before the beginning of the school year. Meadowsweet, the three creepy-weird fairies, someone (anyone) trying to take over the _world_ (universe?) and not giving a damn about the Dragon Fire or even about wiping out their enemies, really. Weird, but true; both Meadowsweet and the fairies, as far as the girls could tell, only killed one another out of necessity. Each got in the other's way, so they needed to be eliminated, and that was that.

It really was only a matter of time until the Winx girls themselves were attacked.

And even then, it wasn't the Winx girls being attacked so much as Alfea school itself. The only reason defenses even fell to them was that the school's normal frontline (Laura, Sabrina, Cadenza) against these sadistic tricksters (a pair of spunky fairies this time) were nowhere to be found.

Bloom was immediately at attention; the girls all transformed in unison ("Oh my god," one of the fairies squealed, "they're like a chorus line!") at her word and hovered in midair around the intruders.

"What's Meadowsweet doing here _now_?" Stella called out to the group at large (but really to Bloom). The two fairies, both grounded but trading teasing grins, snickered at her loudness; one of them, a smallish blonde wearing so many shades of sparkle and pink that she put both Musa and Flora to shame, couldn't hold in a loud laugh and covered her mouth hastily. She whispered something to her much more scantily (and darkly) dressed companion and both laughed loudly, the former clutching at her sides. Aisha scowled and even Flora was starting to look cross.

"What's so funny?" Musa challenged, flying closer to float right above them. The girls looked up at her with matching clear green eyes, hands on their hips.

"Sorry," the blonde said, shaking out her long hair, "we were expecting someone a little more challenging."

"Someone who didn't pull that old 'shout out your plans as you make them up' trick," the other said, tossing her equally long black hair. "Y'know. Someone from _this_ century."

"You know, Keely," the blonde said conversationally, keeping her eyes on Musa as she spoke to her companion, "_Sabrina_ never blurts out her plans during battle."

"That's right, Candasy*," the brunette returned, keeping her eyes on Musa as well. "She never really says much of anything, as I recall."

"What is this, a talk show?" Bloom spit out furiously, taking her friends by surprise. "Are you going to challenge us or not?"

Keely giggled, apparently for sport more than anything else. "You…don't really get how this works, do you?" she taunted. Bloom's expression twisted into an ugly sneer and she shot down to push her face into Keely's personal space.

"Why don't you _teach_ me?" she snapped. Keely raised her eyebrows and Candasy made a "hm" noise.

"Well, Firecracker," Keely said, casually shoving Bloom out of her way and stepping aside, "I'm sure you understand it's easier for us to just _show you_."

"So show me then!"

Bloom gasped sharply as she found herself with her face shoved into the ground, one of her arms being shoved painfully beyond its stretching point. Able to crane her neck just enough to look out the corner of her eye at her assailant, she bared her teeth at an apparently bored Candasy, trying not to growl.

"Bloom!" Flora cried uselessly, raising her hands to her mouth. Candasy rolled her eyes and Keely waved her hand in a "get on with it" gesture; her partner twisted Bloom's arm around, forcing her to flail on the ground and turn herself almost 180 degrees before she was given relief in the form of a forceful pin.

Swearing under her breath, Stella swooped down to help Bloom stand; the shaken fairy wrenched her arm out of Stella's grip, spinning on her heel to face their attackers with tears in her eyes.

"What, we're not _good_ enough?" she shouted, stamping her foot. Keely and Candasy only looked at each other and nodded.

"Pretty much," they said in frightening unison. Flora shuddered.

Trying to come up with something that would work (at least a little), the Winx girls circled up around their opponents, each trying to glare the girls down and getting no rise out of them whatsoever. Tecna's entire arm was glowing neon green and Aisha's hands, balled into fists, sparked with cold, fluid energy; Musa rubbed her hands together quickly and Flora ground the four-inch heels of her boots into the dirt. Keely and Candasy stood back to back, gazes darting around the circle as they pressed their palms together.

Candasy winked. "Easy breezy!"

Without warning, Bloom threw a white-hot ball of fire energy right at the blonde's face. Reacting quickly, Tecna, who stood opposite Bloom and therefore opposite Keely, put her arms out in front of her and sent her crackling electric energy right at the taller fairy's heart.

What happened next was almost (almost) too fast for any of them to catch.

As easily as if they had been expecting it (they probably had), Keely and Candasy had transformed into fairy forms (Believix, shockingly) and flown what must have been at least five yards up, using the pressure of their hands to force one another off to the left and right, respectively. Twisting around midair with their hands outstretched (Keely with her palms up, Candasy with her palms down), the fairies summoned a thick barrier around the Winx girls, arcing over them in a dome that would probably have been a great defense in any other battle. As it were, it only prevented them from moving more than two feet in any direction out.

Aisha thumped her fists pointlessly against the barrier and Flora raised her hand to her cheek, eyebrows furrowed as she bit her lip. Stella threw a ball of solar energy at the wall and it bounced back at her; she ducked and it hit Musa, throwing her back into the wall where she landed with a sick _thud_. Candasy laughed, spinning like a ballerina in a harness.

"What do you want from us?" Bloom screamed, digging her nails into her palms. "What's _wrong_ with you?"

"Ah," Keely said, flying towards the ground and transforming back out of her fairy form as her feet touched down, "there's your problem, right there. _Nothing_ is wrong with us. We're not sick in the head, we're not out to destroy the world. We're not _psychopaths_."

"We want to make the world better for everyone and every_thing_," Candasy added, touching down on the opposite side of the dome. "The world, the solar system, the galaxy, and you can imagine farther out. Well, maybe."

"You want to save the universe by _taking_ it _over_?" Stella asked, clearly abhorrent. "You're totally psychopaths!"

Keely paced around the circle, shaking her finger in the air. "No, not quite," she said as Candasy began to pace around as well. "We don't want to 'save' anyone; we're realists, not optimists. We don't think we can 'save' anyone or any world. We just want to _unify_ them."

"From a political perspective," Candasy continued, "if the planets were all unified under a single governing body, the members all from the same like-minded group with its own strict hierarchy, there would be no need for any interplanetary conflict. Any threat could be immediately isolated and quashed, before it became a problem."

"You're crazy," Tecna said scathingly. "Each planet, at least, would require an individual leader; each leader would have different ideals, different methods of ruling. Your system would _never work_."

"Ah," Keely said—they seemed to enjoy switching off, and neither had disagreed with the other yet. "That's the beauty of the hierarchical system within the larger governing body. If a single ruler were to fall out of line, he would be dealt with quickly and efficiently, replaced without a thought."

"You'd completely remove any input from the common people!" Bloom shouted, as if she took personal offense to their plan. Candasy chuckled and shook her head.

"Individual leaders would be free to receive input from the masses at any time," she said (as if it were that obvious), "and do with it as they wished. Small personalization is perfectly acceptable as long as those particular, planet-specific customizations don't cause systems to stray from the group's larger ideals."

"No," Stella said fiercely. "Each planet is individual, each planet is _unique_. You can't possibly hope to have them all ruled by one person!"

"Meadowsweet isn't one person," Keely said sweetly. "You think one person could possibly be behind our organization? No, our governing body is just that—a board, made up of several individuals united in their goals and the methods by which to attain them. Meadowsweet is merely an idea in the process of execution."

"Still!"

"Hence the allowances for particular changes, individual touches in the leadership of each planet," Candasy repeated. "A planet encompassed in sunlight and accustomed to strict hierarchical rule, for instance, would be governed far differently than a planet swathed in ice and subject to mob rule."

Musa shook her head. "You can't hope to have those two different kinds of places ruled by a single ideal."

"The core of a system of beliefs can transcend such trivial details," Keely said dismissively. "Both could be ruled with the same end result in mind; one may require a stricter method of governing, maybe more of a tangible-rewards-based system, but both would reach the same spot when all was said and done."

"Isn't it funny," Candasy said then, a smile quirking her lips up at the corners, "how you all have stopped your fruitless attempts to escape your prison in order to hear out our plans? Either you've realized how stupid it is to try to break the barrier—which I doubt—or you find some legitimacy in our claims, which I'm sure you would never admit to."

"You're crazy!" Tecna said again, a little more forcefully. This time Keely was the one to smile wryly, knocking her knuckles against the barrier.

"Maybe," she admitted as Candasy nodded speculatively. "In any case, we're not going to kill you. There's no reason. We are going to leave you here awhile, though; your little defense squad can bust you out, whenever they get back."

"You know where they are?" Flora said, sliding forward.

"Of course," Candasy said. "Why wouldn't we? They're out in the woods somewhere, probably killing Nolwenn and Briallen as we speak."

_Killing_. Bloom's palms began to bleed where her nails cut into them.

"You can speak _so casually_ about your own _teammates_ being…being _murdered_?" she hissed. Keely shook her head.

"If they were being murdered, it would have to be premeditated," she said. "I'm sure that, well-prepared as they are, none of our favorite little fairies could've predicted this battle today." She glanced at Candasy almost proudly. "We're much bigger game than those two, anyway; if they'd known we were going to be here, they surely would've stuck around, let Nolwenn and Briallen have their way with that little town."

"And they never would've gone after those two so fast if they'd stopped to think a moment," Candasy added with a snicker. "Like we would've sent them out on their own, the weaklings."

"Yeah, that's what we thought, too."

Keely bit her lip and closed her eyes tightly for a moment. "_Shit_."

Fast as a shot, Laura was bashing Candasy's head with her forearm and sending her flying; Cadenza held Keely's head up with a hand fisted in her hair and bashed her knee into the other girl's solar plexus. As both stood, momentarily doubled over, Sabrina drew her fingers back and strung the two up in midair, leaving them hanging there as Cadenza used her whip-shot attack to break Keely's and Candasy's barrier dome.

"Thank you," Bloom said with something nearing forced sincerity. Cadenza shot her a dirty look and Laura rolled her eyes.

"We didn't do it as a _favor_," Cadenza said bitterly. "We've repaid you for luring them out; now we're even." She glared at Keely's and Candasy's limp forms. "And we didn't killed your lackeys. Too low on the food chain, wouldn't you say? Not our problem."

Sabrina sashayed tauntingly over to Keely and Candasy and flicked her wrist, jerking them around a little. "Sorry," she said, seemingly both to the suspended fairies and to the increasingly offended (angry) Winx girls. "It's been a long night."

"Like that's an excuse," Aisha bit out. Cadenza flicker her fingers in the other girl's direction (without even looking her way) and Aisha stumbled backwards, feeling as though someone had just poked her forehead with something very sharp. "Hey!"

Laura stretched languidly, her arms reaching way up over her head. "It is if you've been as busy as we have." Something (maybe her shoulder) cracked and she shook herself.

As they had seen her do the last time Meadowsweet had attacked Alfea, the Winx watched Cadenza raise her glowing white hand towards the captive fairies; the entire yard was engulfed in the white light for no more than a split second before it faded back to normal and—just as last time—Keely and Candasy were left screaming, wailing, sweating, swearing. Candasy's sparkling pink two-piece was ripped at the shoulder, leaving it to droop over her chest where she pulled at it desperately (grasping for purchase); Keely's already scant dress was nearly in shreds, leaving her huddled this-close-to-naked, crouching on the ground and digging her fingers into the dirt (nails filthy and broken).

"Teach you to mess with us," Cadenza muttered. Sabrina and Laura closed in on their prey, glowing faintly, as Cadenza turned away in disgust and walked over to the Winx girls.

"So," she said, all casual business attire. "What do you want to know?"

---

*Pronounced: can-DAY-see


	14. Well I'll Try and Try Again

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**well i'll try and i'll try again**

_What_?

The opportunity of a lifetime (or so it seemed at the time) suddenly dropped into their laps, the Winx girls were all completely at a loss. Cadenza shifted her weight, less annoyed than merely passing the time until they got their act together, and waited. Bloom tried to shake off her surprise and pick out the most pressing question she could in the shortest amount of time, so of course, by all means, it was—

"What was _that_?"

Stella had lurched forward, dropping her hands to her knees as she stared at Keely and Candasy convulsing a few feet away. Flora put her hand on the other girl's back soothingly as she looked away, the others all staring, completely transfixed. Cadenza's smile turned feral and for a moment, Bloom was convinced she could see truly unfiltered sadism in her eyes.

"You don't want to know," she said in a tone to match her grin. Bloom put her hand on her cocked hip and frowned.

"You can't get out of this that easily," she accused.

"Yeah," Tecna put in, to her surprise. "I've never seen a move quite like that; it seems impossible, what you do, making people go crazy with just a white light, whatever the attack is. How does it _work_?"

Of course. Linear-minded Tecna wanted to know the _mechanics_ of the move, wanted to know _how_ it did…whatever it was doing. Not for the first time, Bloom found herself almost annoyed at the other girl's resistance to accepting magic for what it was. Laura glanced quickly over her shoulder, her mouth quirked at the corner and her eyes shining (with curiosity laughter knowing smiles).

Cadenza leaned close to Tecna, fingers pressed to the other girl's lips as she whispered teasingly.

"_Like magic_."

Laura sniffed a suppressed giggle and even Sabrina cracked a grin as Cadenza laughed at Tecna's befuddled expression. "You didn't think I'd share anything that important so easily, did you?" The slender fairy shook her head. "I would've bet money you were going to ask something a little less important."

"Like who you really are? Really?" Bloom interjected, getting in Cadenza's face and prodding her finger into the other girl's chest. "Aside from 'Cadenza, fairy of Silence'?"

"That would've been my guess," Laura said, turning around completely and leaving Sabrina to guard their prisoners.

"Or 'How could you do that,' that might've been it," Sabrina said, turning as well and swinging Keely around before her. Candasy fell to the ground with a muffled "thump," crying screams reduced to whimpers and whines. Flora bit her fingernail nervously as she dared to look at the captive fairy and her prison guard.

"Do what?"

Laura and Sabrina exchanged a sour look, half exasperated, half cocky.

"I don't wanna know," Musa said forcefully, stalking over to the girls and reaching her hand out to grab Keely's arm and drag her away (or something). Not terribly surprisingly, the girl didn't budge; Sabrina glared at her, narrow cat-eyes making for a frightening imposition.

"You would so doubt my abilities?" she asked coldly, quietly. Teeth clenched and grinding audibly, Musa pulled back her fist—if she couldn't get take the bad guy for herself, the captor would have to do.

Laura was up in her face faster than she could blink, knocking her arm aside like a twig and doing something incredibly painful to Musa's hand, holding it close to her chest. Musa cried out, her free hand clenching in her skirt, pounding down on her leg as she twisted, turned, tried to get away, tried to do _anything_—

Suddenly Laura had dropped her, rubbing her hand on the layers of her dress to wipe off Musa's sweat. The music fairy fell in a heap, clutching her surprisingly uninjured fingers and staring at Laura with something like scandalized disbelief.

"Don't," Laura said icily, "touch her." Musa only narrowed her eyes and curled her lip, now thoroughly baffled.

"You all go into battle all the time," Aisha said. "We see you, all fighting by yourselves; why are you getting so…weird about one slap to the face?"

Cadenza looked over at Laura and Sabrina, both of whom stared at Aisha with cool indifference. "Shall we regale them?" she asked offhandedly. "They did think to ask."

Laura looked slightly out of sorts, as though she knew this was a conversation she didn't have as much of a right to partake in, but Sabrina looked downright smug. "Why not," she asked rhetorically, "they might enjoy a real story of…well."

"The story of what?" Bloom asked, shoving her fists up into the air.

"Or _who_?" Tecna added, holding up her PDA and shaking it back and forth.

Something rather odd happened next. Quietly, without anyone particularly paying attention, Laura withdrew completely from the dialogue, sliding back to lay her hand on Candasy's chest and draw her fingers together, gathering shirt fabric in her fist. Sabrina stepped forward, beside Cadenza, but kept herself angled so that Cadenza's shoulders were between herself and the Winx girls. For her part, Cadenza only bit her lip and stiffened slightly, otherwise remaining cool and controlled.

"You really want to know?" she asked, her calm tone betrayed by her fiery eyes. Stella nodded angrily and Bloom ground her feet slightly, fidgeting with her bottled-up energy.

"Fine," Sabrina cut in surprisingly, "under one condition."

Aisha nearly shoved Stella out of her way at once. "I don't think you're really in a position to—"

"Do you want to hear anything?" Sabrina asked in her trademark quiet, overpowering tone. "Then one condition: Shut up." Aisha shrank back slightly, pouting her silence as Flora laid a hand on her shoulder.

Cadenza's eyes darted to Sabrina and the other girl shifted her weight, some unspoken code that made it okay to talk. Cadenza smiled slightly, showing her teeth and closing her eyes (wistfully) somehow fondly angry.

"Ophelia," she said finally. Musa frowned, not getting it at all, and Flora raised her hands to her mouth with a vague idea of where this was going.

"_Who_?" Stella asked, sounding (irrationally) offended. "What, you mean like the muse?"

Sabrina scoffed indignantly. "You really aren't very bright, are you?"

"Hey, I—"

"Ophelia isn't a muse," Sabrina interrupted, ignoring Stella completely. "Ophelia's muse is considered to be a—well, I'm sure Bloom could tell you more, it is a bit of _Earthly_ trivia." She gestured vaguely to the befuddled Dragon Fire fairy before turning her attention back to Cadenza. "It doesn't matter."

Flora cleared her throat (awkwardly), trying to break the tension and suddenly shoving herself into her regular role of "peacemaker." "So," she said when everyone stopped glaring daggers at each other (started glaring at her), "who _is_ Ophelia?"

Cadenza huffed a small, ironic laugh. "Friend of mine," she said vaguely. Sabrina's expression changed just slightly but she didn't say anything; Laura continued to keep her silent vigil over Candasy's (generally immobile) slightly twitching form. "She was captured about a year ago, little more."

Bloom reflexively snarled at the mention of someone being captured and Flora gasped softly. "Oh, sweetie—"

"Don't pull that crap on me," Cadenza interrupted, glaring at Flora. "You—don't even know. The things they make her do, the things they make her _be_…"

"Don't talk to her like that," Stella cut in furiously. "_You_ don't know what _we've_ been through together!" She pointed to Bloom stiffly, her finger all sharp angles and accusing implications. "When Bloom was captured by Darkar, he turned her _dark_—"

"Go figure," Sabrina muttered, and Cadenza cracked a smile.

"He turned her _evil_," Musa interrupted. "Do you have _any_ idea what that's like? To see one of your best friends turned to the dark side against her will? No control over her actions—"

"Stop," Cadenza interrupted, putting her hand up. Her voice was effortlessly loud and Musa shrunk back a little. "Just stop. Let me guess: She was saved by the power of love." At Stella and Bloom's shared affectionate smile, she groaned. "Figures. Look, kids, in the real world, love doesn't conquer all. It can't break every spell ever, it can't always bring you back from the edge of the pit."

"Are you basing this on personal experience?" Tecna asked scientifically. Sabrina laced her fingers with Cadenza's for a fraction of a second, but it seemed to be enough for the other girl to go on.

"I am," she said. "Ophelia—completely warped by her captors. Meadowsweet. Now she's called Grey, at the bequest of her _overlord_." She spat the word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth (it probably did) and Flora nodded along mindlessly. "They're all renamed, every single one. Keely, Candasy, Nolwenn, Briallen, every _single_ one. Grey and Aracely are never out of one another's sight nowadays, it makes me _sick_."

It was the first personal show of emotion they'd seen from Cadenza, and somehow, despite its violent nature, it put Bloom more at ease with the girl than she had been yet. She was violent, she was angry, she was sadistic, but she was really just another fairy fighting for what she believed in; at the core, she was really just fighting for her friends, even if she was doing it a little…wrong. As if reading her mind, Sabrina shot Bloom a sharp glare.

"Don't."

Bloom jerked back, startled. "What?"

Sabrina laughed, cold and short. "Don't analyze us. Don't say you know what we're fighting for. Don't say you know _us_."

"Why can't you let me _try_?"

Laura finally stepped forward, apparently to Sabrina's surprise as well as the Winx girls'. "Maybe it isn't your place," she said icily. "Maybe you don't _need to know_. Maybe it isn't your _business_, maybe we don't _want_ you to." She sneered at Tecna. "Personal experience, is that what we're calling it now? How about you all just leave us alone? Unless…you have any _other_ questions."

Suddenly finding out their public identities didn't seem so important. Bloom shook her head and eventually, so did Aisha.

"No," Musa said, a little shell-shocked. Sabrina turned on her heel as Laura flew a few inches off the ground. Cadenza stared them all down for a minute before waving them off with a stiff gesture.

"Fine."

They were gone, and somehow, everything was even more confusing than it had been before they even started.

---

All of Laura's physical fighting is a style of martial arts called "aikido," the art of using your opponent's force against him.

As a heads up, Ophelia will be the only fairy to have four names: her fairy name (Ophelia), her "brainwashed" named (Grey), her real name, and another pseudonym.


	15. Domination Freezes in the Mind

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**domination freezes in the mind**

Flora turned uncomfortably on her softly pink sofa (light daisy pattern around the edges), trying to settle herself and not having much luck. Stella pouted into the vibrant blue pillow (frilly edges and big tassels) hugged to her chest and Bloom picked at the loose threads (she had loosened) on her muted green armchair.

Aisha and Musa were offering special extra lessons for struggling students—in reality, both had wanted distractions from all the new information they had gathered about Cadenza and the other two (three) and thrown themselves into work to avoid the discussions that were sure to come up if they all stayed in the same room for more than a minute and a half. Tecna was locked in her room, loudly clacking keyboard audible even in the common area, looking up something she claimed they wouldn't understand no matter how many times she explained it.

"I can't believe they said that," Stella said (for the fifth time at least). "We were just trying to _help_, and they… She threw it back in our faces!"

Flora shrugged awkwardly, not really enough room to move her shoulders where she lay. "I don't know," she hedged, trying to sound casual and coming off tentative and nervous. "I'm not sure they saw it that way, us trying to help. It sounded… It kind of sounded like…"

She bit her lip and Bloom looked up from her fraying armchair, obviously accusing. "Kind of like what?" she asked (weirdly) neutrally. Flora shrugged.

"It sounded kind of like—to me, or…I mean, I think this is probably how it sounded to them. Like you were going out of your way to get involved in their business." The fact that Flora wasn't looking at either of them wasn't lost on anyone. "What Laura said," she went on, less nervous, "about them not wanting us to get involved. I thought it was pretty obvious that Ophelia means a lot to Cadenza, and even if saving her _is_ the reason that they're trying to fight Meadowsweet, is that really our business to get involved _in_?"

Stella made a disdainful noise. "They're handling themselves _awfully_," she said. "They're _hurting_ themselves, each other, people we know, people we care about. It _is_ our business, they _made_ it our business when they came to our school."

"Well," Flora said in a small voice, her nerves back with a vengeance, "maybe. But have we even really found out why they came to Alfea? It wasn't attacked until they showed up, and it doesn't seem like Meadowsweet follows them around for no reason. Maybe they _do_ want something here. Maybe."

"Maybe trouble follows them," Stella said resentfully. Bloom made a face, but Flora wagged her finger in the girls' direction.

"Now, that's not a fair judgment," she scolded. "Trouble follows _us_ wherever we go too!"

Bloom shook her head, staring at some spot on the floor (no one would be surprised to hear she was trying to set it on fire with her mind). "This is different," she said softly. "_They're_ bringing trouble to _us_. We bring trouble to _ourselves_."

Flora pushed herself up to rest on her elbows, looking at Bloom critically. "Are you sure—"

Tecna rapped on her door before swinging it open, a sheaf of paper clutched triumphantly in her hand and waving over her head. "I've got it!" she proclaimed, missing Flora's slightly bemused look at having been interrupted. "I've got it, finally!" Bloom started to question her but Tecna was too caught up in her discovery to notice. "I have it," she said again, shaking the papers almost violently. "Laura, the actress fairy, also known as _Riley Cole from Videlicet_."

Stella stared up at the quivering papers blankly. "The actress fairy?" she asked, skeptical. Tecna shook her head.

"No no, I mean—remember what Lola said? Laura is the actress. Remember? Anyway, I know she said that propaganda and paparazzi don't work the same way in Agnosco that they do here, but I figured there had to be _some_ pictures of actresses on the Internet _somewhere_, and I was right!" Trembling with excitement, Tecna continued to wave the paper tantalizingly out of their reach. "So I spent hours and _hours_ comparing every single photograph of an actress from Agnosco, across the whole Web, with pictures of Delilah, Callista, and Riley."

She paused for their (undoubtedly) awed encouragement but, receiving none, plunged on righteously. "Well, finally I found _one_ picture of an actress from Agnosco—Johari Aylin from Praestigiae—and it turned out there were _websites_, entire _websites_ devoted to her! And from there I found pages and pages of actors and actresses from all _over_ Agnosco!" She took a giggling, gasping breath and hugged the paper to her chest. "Sorry, this has just—it was so much work, and after Lola told us there wasn't anything out there, it just… Well. Anyway, from there it became much easier to find her; of the three of them, Delilah, Callista, and Riley, only _one_ matches up with _any_ of these actresses."

Bloom's eyes began to glitter with her excitement and even Stella looked somewhat greedily eager about the news, but Flora put up her hand slowly.

"Wait a minute," she said, shaking her head once, twice. "What if there really _aren't_ any pictures of Laura on the Internet? What if Lola was right about that?" She rested back against the cushions and frowned. "I think we should wait until we get a good, clear picture of Laura before we make these assumptions and accusations. I mean, you saw what happened with Dayquiria; I can't do that to another one of our girls, I just can't."

Stella and Tecna stared at her, dumbfounded. "Flora," Stella said earnestly, "this could be _the_ break we've been waiting for! We can't just let it go on a 'maybe'!"

"But that's what _you're_ proposing," Flora countered. "All you have is a 'maybe,' but you want to _maybe_ do to Riley what we've already done to Dayquiria—unsettle her, freak her out. Maybe even make her—make her not trust us, her teachers, the people she's supposed to be able to go to for help at any time. You want to do that to Riley?"

Tecna waved her papers again. "Weren't you listening, Flora? The pictures match! Riley Cole _is_ Riley of Videlicet!"

"They match?" Flora asked skeptically. "How much?"

Bloom frowned, twisting in her chair to look over at the other girl. "Why are you so determined to find something _wrong_ with this?" she asked sourly. "This is a good thing! We're making progress! For crying out loud, they even have the same name!"

Flora nodded, her eyebrows raised. "And that doesn't strike you as a little odd? I mean, Laura and the others are each using at _least_ two names apiece, and Ophelia has to have at least _three_, if you count Grey as one. Why would Riley bother using her real name as her stage name?"

No one had a good answer for that, but Tecna refused to let all her work go to waste. "No one ever said they couldn't use their real names on occasion," she said dismissively. Flora's eyes narrowed but she said nothing.

Bloom reached over to quickly snatch the papers from Tecna's hand. "I'm gonna ask her," she said decisively. "If we're right, she should give up right away, don't you think?"

"I _think_ this is a bad idea," Flora insisted. "You're rushing into this risky situation much too fast!"

"And maybe _you_ just aren't willing to take _enough_ risks," Stella shot back, arching up tensely. "This is turning into a bigger war zone than we've ever been to before, we need to be willing to make some sacrifices."

"Maybe of ourselves," Flora admitted, "but I don't think we have the right to throw our students in the line of fire like this."

"You're such a wimp!"

"Because I care about these girls' wellbeing?"

"Because you don't care _enough_!"

"Don't you mean because I don't care the way you want me to?"

"You mean the _right_ way?"

"I can't believe you!"

"_Girls_!" Bloom hollered, standing to thrust her body between them. Stella and Flora both shot her dark looks, neither eager to end the argument they had become so invested in, but the fire fairy refused to back down. "What are you _doing_?"

Stella pointed at a pouting Flora, raising herself up on her knees (looking like a bratty five-year old). "We've got a chance to blow this wide open and she's just—she's just going to let it all get away! Because she's _scared_? What are we supposed to do, sacrifice the safety of the world so a couple girls can have their privacy?"

"The safety of the world?" Flora asked disbelievingly. "We're talking about finding out who one fairy really is, in real life, and you call that ensuring the safety of the world? How is this situation really going to be any different when we know who Laura is?"

Stella's mouth dropped open, eyebrows crossed, but it seemed she could only flounder for a response that made even the slightest bit of sense. "I… Well—but it…"

Frowning, Flora dropped back against the couch cushions. "Think about it, really. How has anything changed since we found out about Allison?" Raising her fingers, she started ticking points off. "Meadowsweet has kept attacking, those three have kept fighting back, and I think we would've found out about Ophelia just the same even if we hadn't know who Sabrina was."

Bloom and Stella looked at one another nervously, neither wanting to admit how much sense Flora was making. Tecna grabbed her papers back from Bloom and fidgeted with them restlessly, her brow furrowed and her eyes desperately sad. "But I—"

"Tecna," Flora cut in, "I'm not saying you didn't do great work, I just think that it's…what we thought we wanted, not what we really needed." She shrugged, averting her gaze. "I mean, if we're going to get these girls to all go away, and bring their Meadowsweet with them, wouldn't it be better to figure out why we lost so badly? Train ourselves up, so we can beat them on our own?"

"At least enough to drive them away," Bloom conceded (awfully quickly). "Beat a few, show them who's boss. If the group is as big as those girls claim."

Tecna sat at the foot of Flora's sofa (light daisy pattern around the edges) and threw the papers to the coffee table between it and Bloom's armchair (muted green) with a little more force than necessary. She turned her head to look at Bloom coldly.

"It's there if you want it."


	16. Things Eclipsing All the Time

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**things eclipsing all the time**

"So wait." Stella combed her fingers back through her hair, shoving it off her forehead and staring Bloom in the eye. "You were serious? I mean…about _training_?"

Stella couldn't have been more scandalized, which Aisha couldn't help but giggle at; the girl was so up in arms about getting rid of Meadowsweet, much less the three mysterious fairies, that she should have been willing to go to any lengths to do so. Except doing actual work, apparently, which (come to think of it) wasn't that surprising.

Bloom nodded with a cocky wink. "Sure was. And I think you've been a little outnumbered, if you're thinking about dissenting."

It was true, of course; Aisha was always up for training of any sort, Musa sure liked to work out, and it had practically been Flora's idea from the start. Cooling off a little after all her work had been shot down, Tecna had even rationalized the plan to herself and determined that it was the most logical, and therefore best course of action (given all concurrent variables and extraneous factors). Stella's fuming was maybe half serious to begin with; a strict training regiment was about to begin and they all knew it.

"Let's get started!" Aisha said energetically, balls of her feet bouncing. Flora smiled demurely behind her hand.

"We should come up with some kind of method first," the flower fairy said with just a hint of shyness. Tecna nodded her approval and (surprisingly) whipped out her PDA.

"I have the videos of all past battles we've witnessed between Meadowsweet and the fairies," she said firmly (maybe still a little offended). "I can analyze the battle strategies of either team, so to speak, and outline the best techniques for us to practice in order to combat them."

Bloom twirled her hair around her finger distractedly, staring out into space. "We should come up with some kind of name for those fairies," she said distantly.

Musa wrinkled her nose. "Why? I mean, we know who we're referring to when we say 'those fairies,' and we don't really want people to know who we're talking about, do we? It can't get much vaguer than that."

"Camp value," Aisha deadpanned. Stella tried (failed) to muffle a shout of laughter.

"Whatever," Bloom said with a small pout. "Maybe they'll name themselves and we won't have to even worry about it. So Tecna, what do we do first?"

The studious fairy pushed her PDA screen towards Bloom, as though it was big enough to show anything clearly or clear enough to enlighten anyone who didn't speak Maths with Tecna's proficiency (which included pretty much everyone who wasn't Timmy, who followed along _most_ of the time). Graphs and numbers and splayed across the screen, numbers labeling the graphs and symbols labeling the numbers in some system Bloom was apparently supposed to understand. She only stared at the screen dazedly, shaking her head.

"What in the world is all that?" Stella asked finally, gesturing to the luminescent screen. Tecna rolled her eyes (mostly in jest).

"See this trajectory?" she asked, pointing. "This…line? It's indicative of—you know what, forget it. We need to practice."

"Practice what?" Flora asked, somehow not sarcastic.

Tecna grinned then, reveling in her new control. "These," she said, pressing a button with her thumb and bringing up a laundry list of (what looked like) techniques with incredibly long names. "This stuff is seriously advanced battle strategy, stuff we might've gotten to if we'd taken Advanced Physical Fighting with Griselda in our senior year." She shrugged. "Maybe. It's…really intense."

"But they use magic," Musa said, frowning. "Why are we focusing on physical stuff? I mean, they use magic a _lot_."

Flora raised her hand slightly. "I have a guess," she hedged. "They fight with magic, it's true—they fight with magic a lot, and they're very good at it, but a big part of their battle style is the physicality of it. Laura uses some sort of martial arts style all the time, doesn't she, and that's very physical; but a big part of that is maneuvering. They all know how to use magic but they all know how to _place_ it, as well."

"Exactly." Tecna pulled her PDA back to herself and glanced down at it before smirking at the other girls. "So we'd better get out and start running drills, don't you think?"

---

"They can't possibly do all this!"

Stella lay on her back, panting heavily and pressing her hands to her forehead as she squeezed her eyes shut. Bloom limply nudged her waist, trying to get her own breathing under control and smiling weakly.

"I didn't know so many kinds of exercises even _existed_," Flora said as she tried to get a handle on her breathing. Even Musa had fallen to her knees, and though Aisha refused to crumble, she was breathing more heavily than she would have liked to admit. Tecna braced herself on a tree, knees trembling as she scrolled through her PDA.

"I admit that was a little harsh for a…first go-around," she panted, "but if we're going to catch up…we need to move fast." She swallowed a deep breath. "We need to work hard. Really hard."

"Check, please," Musa said, raising her arm. Bloom nodded.

"Can we break for the rest of the day?" she asked, looking up. "I mean, it's almost dark."

"We have exercises to do in the dark!" Tecna waved her organizer in Bloom's direction. "That's no excuse!"

Aisha shook her head. "It's pretty stupid to keep going today, though," she said. "We're all exhausted, you must know that. We won't be doing ourselves any favors if we keep going at this rate."

Stella made an approving noise. "I never thought I'd hear those words out of _you_, Aisha, but…I'm glad you said it."

"I'm glad _someone_ did," Flora said, sitting up. "I think we all need to get some dinner and get to bed, that was _exhausting_!"

"Can we come?"

All six girls snapped their eyes up to the sky, startled at the unfamiliar voice above. It was, of course, another fairy—two, actually, one pretty with long dark hair and flowing, elegant wings, the other wickedly gorgeous, a black corset snug around her narrow waist making her glittery blue wings stand out starkly. Bloom stumbled to her feet and pointed at them accusingly.

"Who are you? What do you want with us?"

The girls exchanged an amused look and the corseted fairy twirled in a lazy circle. "I guess we're not invited to dinner," she said to her companion, who shrugged and made a dismissive motion with her hand.

"We might be more inclined to extend the invitation if we knew who you were," Aisha said mockingly. The girls looked at one another and the dark-haired fairy shrugged.

"I," the corseted one said proudly, pointing at herself and striking a pose midair, "am Aracely, fairy of Sunlight. And this—" she pointed to her silent partner "—is Grey, fairy of Mirrors." She smirked, cocking her head. "Can we come _now_, madams?"

"Not likely," Tecna shouted, standing firmly beside Bloom. Flora was biting her thumbnail, thoughts racing. "What do you want with us?"

"Ugh, can you believe this?" Aracely asked Grey, rolling her eyes dramatically. The other girl ignored her completely, eyes focused on the fairies below; Aracely frowned, looking down as well and throwing her shoulders back. "Anyway, ladies, we're not here for _you_. I gather you're some of those 'incorruptible' fairies we've heard _so_ much about, healing each other with the power of love and that shit."

"Damn right we are!" Stella hollered, standing as well despite her obvious tiredness (stumbling). "So you better back off right now, before we get mad!"

Aracely scoffed, flicking her wrist. "Please. If we were interested in you lot, we could've had you at any time. The power of love, what bullshit. Besides." She turned a teasing grin on Stella, flying down to get in her face. "You're clearly exhausted."

Stella grimaced, trying not to spit in the other girl's face. "I know you," she said bitterly. "You're from Solaria, aren't you? Fairy of Sunlight. I'm the only _true_ fairy of the Sun and Moon, get it _right_."

Clapping her hands mockingly, Aracely nodded with a wide grin. "Very good, Princess!" she crowed. "Guess we're not all sparkles and rainbows as much as you all in the government like to pretend, huh? But like I said, we're not here to pick a fight with you D-grade amateurs."

"_Amateurs_—"

"You're Aisha, right?" Aracely interrupted. "The cocky one, the athlete." She moved to hover just out of the other girl's reach, scrutinizing her with a hand on her chin. "You're cute." Dropping her hold, she spiraled up and away, resting midair beside Grey. "Still, not here for you. Where's Cadenza? I'd've expected her and her girls by now."

Flora's eyes widened as her hand dropped back to her side, but she didn't say anything. Musa spared her a quick glance but was more focused on Grey; why hadn't she said anything? Whatever her problem was, these girls were different from the other Meadowsweet fairies who had sacked Alfea so far… They hadn't just shown up and drawn Cadenza and the others out at once; they were _looking_ for them, them specifically, and being downright…_straightforward _about it. And yet, they hadn't managed to draw them out. But the fairies had always known about these attacks in the past, so now…where were they? Avoiding these two? Musa shook her head and narrowed her eyes. Something had changed in Meadowsweet's motives and methods, and maybe in the three fairies' as well.

"We don't know anything about them," Bloom said with bitter honesty, "and we don't know how to get them to come out and make _you_ go away. Believe me, we would've told them about you right away."

"If you could," Aracely said smugly. "I see, so that's how it works here? I should've known they wouldn't line up with…" she made a vague gesture with her twisting wrist, "_you_. What're you, the pride of planet Earth? Please, I could take that place over _myself_ if it was worth anything."

"I'll bet it's worth a hundred times whatever dump _you_ crawled out of!" Bloom screamed furiously, rising a couple of inches off the ground. Stella shot her a glare but dismissed the insult in the heat of the moment; Aracely just laughed, creepily reminiscent of Icy (of all people).

"That explains why there isn't any _magic_," Aracely teased.

"Maybe magic isn't worthy of _Earth_!"

Aracely stared at Bloom for a long minute as the other girl seethed, finally bursting out laughing. "You—you have to know that doesn't make any sense," she stuttered. Bloom only grit her teeth and sharply looked away.

"Aracely!"

Of course, it had only been a matter of time. Chancing to look up, Flora saw Grey's eyes dart to Cadenza for a moment before her mouth twisted into a harsh smirk.

"Allison!" Aracely cried out in greeting, opening her arms wide as if to hug the other girl. "Gosh I missed you girls. Anyway, we should get to business, don't you think? I mean, you want to capture us, we want to kill you… Let's get on with it!"

"Not likely," Cadenza said acidly. "Get out of here, Aracely, you know we don't need you."

"And abandon my partner?" she asked melodramatically. "Wow, heartless much?"

"Shut up!" Cadenza shouted. The Winx girls watched, fascinated and startled at the dramatic emotional show; only Flora seemed unsurprised. "I'll kill you, you know I will!"

Aracely wagged her finger teasingly. "Temper, temper, sweetheart. You of all people should know what my partner and I are capable of."

Cadenza bared her teeth and growled low in her throat. "She's not your partner," she hissed. "Don't _degrade_ her like that."

"Oh, that hurt, it really did."

Suddenly Stella looked up, her eyes wide. "Where's Grey?"

Sure enough, as the other girls looked up, Grey had vanished; none of the fairies above them seemed concerned (hadn't notice or didn't care?), and nothing seemed to be coming of it. Laura skittered around to position herself behind Aracely as Sabrina flew slightly below her and Cadenza slightly above, but the girl seemed unconcerned.

"You know as well as I how this will turn out," Aracely said dully. "Surely you wouldn't risk an attack with your precious girl out of view…Cadenza."

"Don't talk about her to me," Cadenza hissed. Sabrina tensed slightly and Laura's hands began to glow—just a faint shimmer, only enough to announce her intentions without actually doing much.

"So," Aracely said archly, "it's a fight you're after, huh? All right, I'm game."

"Don't toy with us," Sabrina snapped, raising her hands. Aracely's grin widened.

---

I've kept up with the Winx Club as much as anyone, and I know all about Roxy and the fourth season. This story disregards her presence and the presence of fairies on Earth in general; the girls still got their Believix for making Earthlings believe in magic, but fairies aren't born there.


	17. Never Look Back

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**never look back at all the damage we have done**

Aracely was all cool confidence and arrogant smirks; Laura was hanging back as she (apparently) sometimes did, assessing the situation and her place in it; Cadenza floated, frozen midair, her eyes sharp and bright as she refused to let her enemy out of her sight and judged her next course of action; the only one out of place, it seemed, was Sabrina. The normally unflappable fairy grit her teeth and clenched her fists, arms trembling with the force of it as her hard cat eyes narrowed to slits she couldn't possibly see out of (except she could). Grey was still nowhere to be seen, but none of the combatants seemed bothered by her vanishing act. If anything, Cadenza had seemed prepared for it, almost _expecting_ it.

Laura screamed.

"Laura!" Bloom shouted, something like a reflex. Flora even flew towards her (just a little) before Sabrina waved her hand towards them without even bothering to look, easily anticipating their move and stopping it before it started. Stella stamped her foot in frustration and Tecna whipped out her PDA.

"What a fascinating opportunity," she muttered to herself. Musa rolled her eyes and Aisha ignored them both, staring up at Laura with something close to horror (fear).

In a flash, Cadenza had disappeared—she was beside Laura, but then Grey was back, holding out her hands and grinning mockingly, her eyes like ice piercing Cadenza's fierce façade as the other girl focused completely on Aracely, of all people—Sabrina jerked her hands and Aracely was strung up, midair, anyone could see that, she was trapped like a puppet but laughing, _laughing_—

"Stop it!" Laura screamed, her voice shattering as she clutched at her head. "Get them away from me!"

"It's not real," Cadenza said fiercely, her arm around the other girl's shoulders as she dared to look up at Grey. "Let her go," she said, cold and commanding. Grey only shrugged, twirling her wrists; Laura flung herself aside, out of Cadenza's grasp to get away from some invisible enemy (only she could see), her bright hands grasping at nothing and biting her lip as her eyes welled. Cadenza turned midair, facing Grey completely.

"Stop it," she said, her voice low. "Stop it right now."

"It's no use and you know it," Aracely crowed, high-pitched and frighteningly confident. "She's ours now. You had your chance, and you blew it! Lost her forever!"

"There's no such thing." Cadenza's eyes never left Grey's and Aracely just laughed, and laughed…

"Have you noticed something?" Musa asked Bloom, her voice hushed (conspiratorial). The fire fairy glanced at her distractedly but didn't answer; an attack could come out of anywhere at any moment and she needed (needed) to be vigilant. Frowning, Stella nudged her shoulder. "Something about Grey?"

"Cadenza sure seems to know her tricks," Bloom answered, not really answering. "Looks like Laura is the only one who didn't know exactly what to expect, that's probably why Grey attacked _her_."

"_No_," Musa said forcefully, looking up at the grinning girl. "Haven't you noticed? She hasn't said a _word_."

"Uh?"

Bloom's eyes widened slightly and she nodded, struck dumb; while the others had been flinging insults left and right, teasing and trying to unsettle one another (even Sabrina the quiet one), Grey hadn't said a thing in the entire—minute? hour? time—she had been there. No one else seemed to have picked up on it, but trust the music fairy to notice a lack of sound.

"Strong, silent type?" Flora asked, sidling up next to Musa to listen in. Musa shook her head.

"I don't think so. She hasn't been stuck up about it or anything, just…anything anyone says, she doesn't make a sound."

Aisha appeared out of nowhere to add her agreement. "She's so focused on the battle, paying attention to everything all at once; I can't even tell what her power is."

"Mirrors, Aracely said," Stella added, leaning on Bloom. "Of course we don't know what _that_ means, but it's something."

"Could explain why Laura is so frightened," Tecna said distantly, waving her PDA around to get a better signal (or something).

A sudden blast of light above them made all the Winx girls jump; Cadenza, it seemed, had finally stopped trying to talk to Grey and began her assault on Aracely, her dark energy whip wrapped around the girl's throat (weirdly enhancing her beauty) as she lowered herself to get nose-to-nose with her captive.

"Don't," she said dangerously, "mess with me. _Sohalia_."

The girl's laughter stopped abruptly and she stared at Cadenza with some mix of awe and despair. "What?"

"As if I don't know," Cadenza spat. Stella had become transfixed on the scene above, something seeming to occur to her (only halfway) as Tecna drew her PDA in close and typed "Sohalia" into her magically-connected-to-everything-ever search bar.

"Some kind of spell…" she muttered under her breath, but Stella shook her head.

"Not a spell," she said quietly, "a _name_."

Cadenza kept talking, non-words and phrases that didn't mean anything except they obviously _did_ because Aracely-Sohalia was trying to claw at the noose around her neck and biting her lip bloody. Sabrina moved her hands again, tightening her invisible hold on the girl and keeping an eye on Laura (panting, clutching her chest) from afar. Grey watched with detached interest, suddenly (magically) visible.

"_Stop it_!" Aracely-Sohalia screamed finally, trying to move her immobilized legs as she let her head drop on her shoulders, Cadenza holding her up by the neck. "Stop it, I don't want to go back!"

"I stopped caring what you wanted the moment you took my friend from me," Cadenza hissed, jerking the glowing rope. "Sohalia Dysis. Get out of here and _never_ show your face around me _again_."

The addition of the second name seemed to do the trick as Sohalia blinked rapidly and stopped trying to bite herself, instead licking tenderly at her lip and wincing at the taste of blood. Cadenza sneered and the whip dissolved, the poor girl dropping a few inches in the air before she recovered herself. Coughing into her hands, her eyes darted around the scene and she shot down to the ground towards Stella.

Falling to her knees, she clasped her hands and bowed her head; Stella blinked rapidly, bewildered. "Princess," Sohalia Dysis started, lowering her forehead to the ground, "I am deeply apologetic for any inconvenience—any discomfort I may have caused, I-I am so, so sorry, my sincerest, _sincerest_ apologies—"

"Whoa there," Stella said, waving her hands. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to, I don't think, I-I don't even really know who you _are_." She jerked her thumb towards Cadenza and Sabrina, who had turned their attention to Grey, and Laura, who was just beginning to recover herself and shake off her fright (at…nothing). "I think they'd appreciate it a little more."

Sohalia looked up at Cadenza, eyes wide and frightened, transforming her beauty into something less stunning and more innocently childish. "I don't think she would take kindly to that," she said in a hushed voice, almost reverent. Bloom shook her head and pulled the girl up by her shoulder.

"People say things in the heat of battle," she said dismissively. "Trust me, I bet Cadenza would really appreciate an apology from you; maybe you can even help them get Grey back to normal." She paused; "That _is_ what they're trying to do?"

"I-I think so," Sohalia stuttered, "but I'm sure I'd be no help at all, I don't want to get in the way and-and Cadenza told me, she was _very_ clear, that she never wanted to see me again."

"Yeah," Stella said mock-thoughtfully, "_before_ she healed your brain. Go on, give it a shot!"

"No, I—"

"Go on, Sweetie," Flora said kindly, putting a supportive (peer pressure) hand on her back. "We'll be right down here, don't worry."

Sohalia bit her lip again and winced when her teeth gnashed the ripped flesh there; frowning and balling her hands into fists, she flew up towards Cadenza, who was still facing off with Grey (apparently). As she matched the other girl's height, the Winx girls watched with baited breath; Cadenza was prickly in the best of situations and she appeared to have been put even more on edge than usual, but surely this would work out.

"What did I _tell_ you?" Cadenza snarled, not bothering to tear her gaze away from Grey long enough to even look at Sohalia. "Get away from me!"

Keeping her eyes on the silent mistress as well, Sabrina looped her arm over her head and snapped it out towards the ground—Sohalia was paralyzed, flung to the dirt with a _crack_ (surely some broken something) as her head hit with a sickening thunk. Flora gasped and rushed to her side, falling to her knees and finding her socks stained wet and sticky (was that blood) and Bloom was off like a shot, level with the fairies above as her hands glowed with bright flames (how _dare_ you). Stella cried out and stumbled back as Aisha slid beside Flora, her hands glowing faint pink (fix something, anything), Musa flying up to join Bloom as Tecna passed her PDA over Sohalia's body, searching for injuries (please let her be okay).

"How could you do that?" Bloom shouted, all righteous indignation. Cadenza still wouldn't look away from Grey, whose smile had finally begun to fade.

"Get out of here," Sabrina snapped, gracing them with a single brief, cold look. Musa flew up to her level and got in her face, her hips swinging slightly as she regained her balance.

"Stop telling us what to do, how about that?" she snapped back. "Stop hurting innocent girls, stop attacking everyone you please!"

"You don't understand anything," Laura hissed, flinging Bloom roughly aside when she tried to get in front of the other fairy. "Get out of here!"

"Let us help you!" Bloom shouted back. She pointed to Grey. "Let us help you save _her_!"

"Get _away_."

Sabrina drew her hands up above her head and, twisting around to brace herself against the attack, Bloom felt her wings freeze midair; her muscles tensed and her magic stopped filtering properly through her body as she began to fall, able to move her body but quickly sliding out of her fairy form, flickering, neither here nor there, stuck—

She landed on top of Stella as the other girl tried to catch her, sending them both to the ground. Musa took her cue and flew down to meet them, standing with locked knees and tight fists as she glared at (nothing) the ground. Not only had the girls proven themselves powerful fighters, but _dangerous_ (to everyone). They were crazy, every last one of them.

"Sohalia," Flora whimpered, feeling around desperately for a pulse. "Sohalia, can you hear me? Are you there? Say something, please!"

"Flora, hold on," Aisha said (irritably?), passing her glowing hands over the frail girl's stomach. "She might not be able to talk, give her some air."

Flora nodded, her breath hitching as she pressed her hands to her mouth and tried to give Aisha room to work. A loud crash (broken glass) in the air served as a momentary distraction, but none of them really paid attention.

"Hemorrhage," Tecna said quietly, kneeling opposite Aisha on Sohalia's other side. Aisha nodded, drawing her hands back as Tecna pointed to two spots on the small girl's still form (chest and abdomen). "She needs serious medical attention."

"We can't move her," Aisha said, shaking her head. "Bloom," she turned to her spooked friend, "can you find someone in the nurse's office? Anyone trained, we need this girl to be seen immediately."

Bloom fled to the infirmary. Sabrina crashed into a dormitory tower with a sharp noise and Laura screamed.


	18. Haven't Listened to a Thing They've Said

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**haven't listened to a thing they've said  
**

"Sabrina!" Musa called as the other fairy fell from the tower, crumpling to the ground. Struggling to her feet, she shot Musa a disdainful (unsurprising) glare, but didn't take to the skies again; pressing her hand to her chest, she seemed to be trying to catch her breath. Chancing to glance up, Stella saw Laura arrange herself in a cross-legged position (sitting midair?), her eyes closed and her hands glowing faintly; when she opened them again, all traces of her scream-inducing fear had fled and she glowered maliciously at Grey (who paid attention only to Cadenza).

Stella stumbled her way over to Sabrina and pointed up to the battling fairies. "Aren't they friends?" she snapped. "Cadenza has to know _something_ that can get Grey back to normal!"

Looking up at the two (three) fairies, Sabrina shook her head. "You don't know the first thing about brainwashing magic," she said without any real malice. Stella still drew herself up indignantly and sneered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing short of exactly what it sounds like."

"I'll have you know," Musa said brazenly, stepping in and swinging her hips, "that we all have _first-hand_ experience with brainwashing magic, and it's stupid of _you_ to assume otherwise."

"Right, right," Sabrina said, waving her free hand, "that thing with Bloom a few years ago, yeah?" She made a course, disdainful noise. "That wasn't _real_ brainwashing."

Stella gasped, melodramatic and offended. "Well then what would _you_ call it, Miss I-wasn't-even-there?"

"I'm gonna assume you know that's not my name," Sabrina said distractedly, her eyes darting around to follow Grey's and Cadenza's movements—they had started fighting in earnest at some point, it seemed, and while Cadenza merely ignored Laura (apparently), it looked like Grey was going out of her way to avoid her. "We all know the story, it's not hard to find. I wouldn't call it brainwashing because it _wasn't_, it was…emotional tampering, you could call it."

"She was attacking her best friends and you call that 'emotional _tampering_'?" Musa screamed, pointing at herself to indicate her status as a "best friend." Sabrina nodded, stepping in place a few times (like a horse).

"Her boyfriend got her out of it by telling her he loved her, right?" She still didn't look at them, speaking almost to herself (except utterly not). "Then she used her Dragon power to knock the guy off, out of her head. Not honest magical brainwashing, just screwing around with the power of suggestion."

Stella pouted and Musa glowered, but neither had anything to add.

"What about Valtor?" Flora asked suddenly, falling in beside Musa. "His seal, turning magical beings into his slaves. That's brainwashing, isn't it? By your standards."

"Closer," Sabrina admitted, still watching her teammates. "He completely took over their minds, it's true, but reduced them to his slobbering drones. He sacrificed their free will for any sort of independent thought—any thought at all, really."

"Isn't that what happened to your friend?" Stella asked accusingly. Sabrina rolled her eyes, still not looking down.

"No. Meadowsweet's brainwashing leaves the illusion of free will, merely altering certain parts of the consciousness to give victims the perception of—you know what, why am I explaining this to you? Do you even understand?"

"I might if you finished," Musa snapped as Flora nodded. Stella looked between the two and shrugged, drawing back to check on Sohalia. After another moment of watching the action above (nothing changed), Sabrina finally looked down at her two accusers and stepped just far enough away from the wall so as not to let it support her completely.

Reaching her arm around the back of her head, Sabrina tactfully ignored Musa tensing up in preparation for a fight and elegantly tossed her long hair, standing with her weight shifted slightly forward (ready to spring). "All right," she said patiently. "As I was saying. Darkar, that emblem of all things evil in the world," (she waved her hands mockingly), "at least, until the next big baddie comes around to threaten world peace, didn't know the first thing about brainwashing. His, uh, 'mind control' was just tampering with his victims' emotions. I mean, for crying out loud, how did he get to Bloom in the first place? He tied her to a table and put her _under a spell_. He didn't need to send her off on her own to spread his ideals; he just needed to be able to control her power. He was there, every time she was let loose, there to control her, to jump-start his spell if it started to fail.

"The problem with that," she went on, "is that spells of control are very temporary. They create two—well, I won't be too technical. They alter the, let's say the temperament of the amygdala, or its rough equivalent in whatever the species being controlled happens to be. That," she said suddenly at Flora's perplexed expression, "is roughly the part of the brain which controls normal behavior. Its often the part affected when a person has a psychiatric disorder. Anyway, you can see how controlling that would allow someone to control a person's behavior? Make them appear evil, in other words."

"Whoa, whoa," Musa said suddenly, waving her hand in Sabrina's face and making the other girl lean back, clearly annoyed. "Where did you_ learn_ all this?"

Sabrina muffled a small laugh. "It's not _hard_," she said. "I gather you don't learn a lot about anything non-magical around here? In Agnosco we spend a certain amount of time learning about _why_ spells and things work, not just taking for granted that they _do_. Biology is important for spells cast on people and other living beings, for instance; physics and mathematics explain a lot of spells that aren't…and so on."

Flora and Musa exchanged an appraising look and Flora urged Sabrina to continue.

"Well, the thing about controlling the amygdala is that it's only one part of the brain. The entire thing makes up a person's personality, and when you really look at it, the amygdala is pretty small." Sabrina held up her hand, her fingers about an inch apart. "So even though it's critically important, when that's all a spell focuses on taking over, the rest of the brain is going to be able to eliminate the infectious spell fairly quickly. Especially if a person is very closely in touch with his or her magical core; that power is _very_ resistant to infection. The magical essence of a guardian fairy, for instance, is more finite, more concrete, and therefore more able to defend against intrusion like influence spells; one of you would be better equipped to throw off that kind of control than, say, one of your students."

"What about self-awareness?" Flora asked, raising her hand out of reflex. "Or self-esteem? Self-control? Determination?"

Sabrina waved her hand dismissively. "Those things are fine for getting rid of extremely low-level influence spells, but those at the level that I'm sure Darkar was working require a powerful magical core to throw. Or outsider influence, which is why Sky's words could get to Bloom—oh," she said coldly at Musa's widened eyes. "The king of Eraklion is well known, even in Agnosco. Besides, knowing the ruler of any given planet at any given point is part of basic international relations. Required for graduation for any reputable school in Agnosco."

Clearing her throat, Sabrina chanced another glance up at the battle above and apparently decided her narrative was short enough to continue. "In any case, Valtor worked, as I'm sure you recall, with a somewhat more effective but cruder method: the trapping seal. While more long-term and requiring less supervision than the simple influence spell, the trapping seal is, effectually, also a mere spell of influence. It allows victims to be let loose as it controls their entire brain, entrapping (as the name implies) the magical core—shutting off the means of breaking free. The fact that the entire brain is taken over means that outside influence won't have any effect either; the only way to dismiss the spell is to get rid of the seal."

"Sounds pretty un-crude to me," Musa said derisively. Sabrina shrugged.

"It would, I suppose. The problem is that as it affects the entire brain, all energy is devoted to overriding the being's usual impulses and behaviors; the victim is reduced to a mindless slave, able to act upon one and only one command. More specifically, one phenomenon. In Valtor's case, I believe it was to cause destruction by any means possible. Self-preservation is all but gone, meaning drones must be expendable and easily replaceable. The spell gets its job done, but not much more."

"They're like robots," Flora said quietly.

"Kind of." Sabrina made a shifting motion with her hands, moving her shoulders. "Non-sentient robots who can only perform a single function. Not something you would pay much money for."

"So how is your guy any different?" Musa challenged.

"It's not a 'guy,' " Sabrina corrected. "It's a unit, an organization. Their method is much more thorough, much more complex. It is a spell, true, but an older one, one which takes longer to cast and requires a very specific trait."

"The name," Flora said wondrously. Sabrina's smile was tense and patronizing, but she nodded.

"Exactly. As I'm sure you know, almost everyone in Agnosco has several names and we tend to be touchy about which names are given out to whom; especially with old magic, the name is the key to both casting the spell and to breaking it. It makes fighting anonymous foes extremely challenging; in fact, we were lucky that Cadenza knew Sohalia's given name, as I did not and I am fairly sure Laura didn't, either."

"You didn't look it up?" Musa asked, switching from offense to curiosity.

"Actually, no." Sabrina looked up again and didn't look back down. "We were solely focused on saving Grey, but we had a hard time getting information on her partner; Meadowsweet is aware of our intentions and they kept such information as that under excessive lock and key."

"Why do they want to keep Grey so badly?" Flora asked, also looking up.

"They don't. They just know that _we_ want her, so they assume that giving her up would be detrimental to their cause."

"Why _do_ you want her?" Musa asked without a trace of hesitation. Flora dashed her gaze between Musa and Sabrina nervously as the other fairy because hardened and serious.

"Because," she said softly, "she is our _friend_."

Taken aback slightly, Musa nodded and looked up as well. Flora's gaze had become slightly unfocused, her mouth open a bit as she watched the quick-moving action.

"She's stopped fighting Laura," she said distantly. Sabrina frowned, fluttering her wings.

"She knows Laura's figured out how to counteract her magic," she said finitely. "This isn't going to go well."

"Why—"

Suddenly Sabrina was next to Laura (when did that happen); they spoke for maybe fifteen seconds before Cadenza dragged Grey up behind them. The three circled their foe (still smirking, always confident) and the air flickered.


	19. This is Just Enough to Keep Me Concerned

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**this is just enough to keep me concerned**

"This way, over here! Over here!"

Bloom tripped over her own feet rushing back to Aisha and Tecna, still glowing and running instruments over Sohalia (still, silent), and beckoning Nurse Lorelei behind her. The young attendant (night nurse) rushed to Sohalia, waving Aisha and Tecna out of the way and skimming her hands over the small girl's body.

"How long has it been?" she asked tensely, pausing with one hand at Sohalia's chest and the other at her stomach.

"Ten minutes?" Aisha said tentatively. Tecna nodded, displaying her PDA's automatic timer.

"Nine minutes and fifty-three seconds," she said precisely. Aisha rolled her eyes and Nurse Lorelei frowned.

"Too long," she muttered, her glowing hands brightening pale blue. "One of you ladies raise her head about two inches off the ground, hurry now."

Stella conjured a thickly stuffed pillow and Sohalia's head seemed to raise itself as the sun fairy made concerned whimpering noises. Nurse Lorelei shot her a sharp glare and turned back to her work; the glow of her hands engulfed Sohalia's body completely and faded away.

"I've halted all her bodily functions," she said bitterly. "She won't be in any pain and it'll prevent the damage from becoming any worse until I can stabilize her, but I'll warn you that the solution is incredibly temporary. If it lasts longer than, say, an hour, the damage from the freeze alone'll cause her irreversible damage."

"What do we need to do?" Tecna asked, her eyes hard as she swept her gaze up and down Sohalia's body. Nurse Lorelei frowned.

" 'We' don't need to do anything," she said in a tone leaving no room for argument. "This girl needs actual surgery, there's too much damage for me to heal her magically with any confidence." She glanced up as the air itself seemed to dim and spark. "And she should probably be indoors, away from this energy discharge. Could be dangerous to her condition, you never know." Standing, Nurse Lorelei summoned a stretcher. "Two of you ladies go ahead to the infirmary, make sure no one is in there and at least an entire room is clear."

Aisha pushed herself up, but Bloom and Stella were faster, running as much to get away from the battle above as to help out their new companion (friend?); Nurse Lorelei carried (levitated) Sohalia alongside herself as she followed. Aisha's pout was eclipsed by a loud noise from above (breaking glass) and an unfamiliar shout.

"_Effie_!"

Tecna and Flora looked up at once—Cadenza had obviously been the one to speak—and Flora was the first to notice that Grey seemed startled by the word. She immediately turned her back on the Silence fairy, coming face-to-face with Sabrina, who repeated the word insistently ("Effie!"). Laura was the only one who appeared the least bit hesitant, but Grey continued to avoid her angrily (so it didn't matter). She tried to spiral up, away, but Cadenza was above her before she had a chance to make much progress, forcing her back down.

"You can't run," Sabrina said tersely when Grey was facing her (quickly looked away).

"Stop trying to get out of this," Laura said finally, her eyes darting to Sabrina for confirmation that it was okay. Grey pressed her hand to her forehead and shuddered.

Cadenza looked down at the Winx girls, staring up (fascinated), and frowned. "Go away!" she shouted, but Aisha shook her head at once.

"Forget it," she called back. "We've seen how dangerous she can be, we're not leaving you alone!"

"Even if you are a bunch of jerks," Musa muttered under her breath. Flora nudged her (without much malice).

Grey tried to flee again but Sabrina was the one to catch her this time; throwing both her arms out to the sides, she trapped Grey spread-eagle between herself and Laura, Cadenza lowering herself enough to be at the prisoner's eye level. Grey clenched her own eyes shut and Cadenza reached her hand back—

"She wouldn't," Tecna muttered.

She would.

The punch wasn't especially loud but it might as well have split the sky in two for the dark silence it spread across the field. Flora's hands clamped down on her mouth and even Musa was wide-eyed and spooked; Aisha's angry gaze was matched with bared teeth and Tecna turned to her PDA (distraction) fervently.

"That's no way to bring your _friend_ back!" Musa shouted, her voice weirdly choked. Cadenza didn't look down (unsurprising) but something strange did happen next.

A bright bluish light filled everyone's vision, there and gone in under a second, but when it cleared Cadenza had turned away from Grey and her clenched fists slammed against her hips as she grit her teeth and closed her eyes tight. Grey's hip was tossed out, her arms crossed cockily, and Cadenza…Cadenza looked like she was about to _cry_. Sabrina was suddenly beside her, facing Grey with cold fire in her eyes as she snapped something low (impossible to hear), making some violent motion with her hands, and Grey actually startled a bit, inching backwards.

Laura moved around the trio so quickly, she appeared to be everywhere at once; Sabrina didn't seem to notice, but Grey's eyes darted around the circle and she tensed slightly, opening her glowing palm. Sabrina grabbed her hand at once, forcing it back and making Grey wince. Aisha stepped forward on the ground, obviously wanting a piece of the action, but her workout exhaustion was finally starting to catch up with her and she couldn't manage to launch herself up (all for the best).

"Effie," Sabrina said, low and dangerous, "I swear, if you had half an idea what you've done…"

The unspoken threat was heavy in the air, but Grey didn't seem terribly affected by it. Cadenza gathered herself (sort of) and turned back around, the collage of her hazel eyes watery and narrowed. Sabrina raised her hands, obviously about to make Grey into her own personal puppet, but Cadenza grabbed her wrist (without looking) and shook her head (eyes on Grey).

"No," she said thickly. "Just…help Laura."

Aisha and Musa fully expected Sabrina to refuse, stubbornly insist on helping out, but to their (obvious) surprise she only nodded, shooting Grey one last glare before stopping Laura in her rounds and positioning them each at opposite sides of the face-off. Cadenza held out her hand, small flickers of energy sparking over it, and Grey frowned but didn't move.

"Effie," Cadenza said, tightly controlled, suddenly furious. "Do you have _any idea_…"

Shaking her head slowly, disbelievingly, Cadenza turned to face Sabrina and nodded without any preamble. Grey looked between them coldly, calculatingly, but just as Sabrina seemed ready to make her move (elegantly with a little flair), a lot of things happened at once.

Laura appeared behind Grey, pulling her arm back to pin her midair and piercing a couple of specific points on her back; the other fairy opened her mouth suddenly and made a choking sound, rearing back as her flowing wings drooped uselessly against her and falling as Laura let her go. Cadenza flung out her whip, grabbing Grey around the middle and dragging her back up to eye level as Sabrina flung her arms out to the sides, bringing her hands together with a loud clapping sound as Grey stiffened, immobile. The dark whip vanished and Cadenza yanked her hands back, enveloping everything in a whitish-blue light that vanished in a moment—Laura was beside her and Grey curled in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest and pressing her forehead to them. Cadenza looked suddenly exhausted and Sabrina fled to her side, holding her shoulders tightly. Grey made a weirdly choked sobbing sound as Cadenza let herself collapse against Sabrina and Laura's hands began to glow.

Sabrina jerked her free hand harshly and Grey's head snapped up (split lip), forcing her to look at Laura through teary eyes (the right one dark and swollen). Laura only scowled, flying forward and shoving her brightened hand against Grey's forehead.

"Resist _this_," she said bitterly, giving Grey's head another (unnecessary) shove. Grey's eyes went glassy, her arms limp around her knees; Cadenza looked up at them and turned her face into Sabrina's shoulder. Whatever that white light had been…it had really done a number on her (it wasn't just the fight).

"Oh god, Effie…"

---

I know the nurse during the Winx girls' time at Alfea is named Ofelia, but given that the Winx have replaced the teaching staff (more or less), I figured I could add in a new nurse as well. As far as I know, Lorelei is a completely original character serving only as the night nurse and will not play a significant role in the rest of this story. The reason for the switch will probably become clear…shortly.


	20. Wat'cha Know That I Don't Know

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**wat'cha know that i don't know  
**

Laura tore her hand down after a minute with a disgusted noise, her eyes cold and unrelenting despite her obvious frustration. Grey paused, frozen for a few seconds before she blinked the glaze from her eyes and shook her head; she looked at Cadenza and Sabrina, completely bewildered, and tried to unfold herself to her full height but stopped when Sabrina jerked her hand (the one not wrapped around Cadenza's shoulders), stopping her mid-motion.

"Don't think so," she said coolly. Cadenza shook her head and turned out of her friend's embrace (but didn't quite move away).

"Laura," she said tiredly, "what happened? I mean, how—"

"Not too bad," Laura interrupted irately. It was the first time the Winx girls had seen any of the three fairies being terse with each other, and Musa tensed up immediately as Flora flinched (Tecna tried not to notice). "She's about half an inch away from, from Effie, but I can't—she's in deep. They must have spent a long time on her."

Cadenza sighed, shaking her head. "At least they _had_ to," she muttered. "Well, shit."

Sabrina muttered something in her ear and flew down to the ground, transforming back into Allison as she landed. Even though her "secret" identity had been outed awhile ago, it was still startling to actually see the transformation from the lithe, confidently graceful fairy into the shadowy but omnipotent-looking young girl with dark hair falling to hide her features. She tossed her head, raking her hand through her bangs to move them aside as she neared Aisha and Musa.

"You all need to leave," she said, her tone not malicious but leaving absolutely no doubt about what would happen if they tried to argue. "You need to leave _now_. Go to the infirmary, check on Sohalia; as professors, it's your technical responsibility as well as an easy out from this situation." Her eyes narrowed and she folded her arms across her chest. "Go on."

Tecna moved up a few steps, her eyes still on her PDA (evidently she _was_ being productive). "That wouldn't be wise in this situation," she said, equally (unwisely) cool. "Cadenza appears to be facing an 'unknown'; none of you have had any personal investment in the previous victims of this Meadowsweet brainwashing, and her efforts may be compromised."

To her credit, Allison didn't seem quite so surprised as quietly furious and disbelieving; she had expected the rebellion, but that didn't mean she could understand it. Offering a thin-lipped smile, she kept her eyes on the technology fairy as she slowly shook her head.

"I don't think you understand," she said thinly. "You _need_ to _leave_."

"Why?" Musa challenged, butting in. Allison shifted her gaze impassively.

"You don't understand the circumstances you've tried to involve yourselves in," she said. "It would be to your benefit and ours for you to leave."

"You didn't answer her question," Aisha pointed out, jabbing her finger at Allison's chest. The other girl looked down at it skeptically and brushed it aside with little effort.

"Once again," she said, "you don't understand these circumstances and, while I am sure you would appreciate an explanation of them, such a thing is most unwise at this and most likely any other time." Waving her hand dismissively, Allison seemed to be shutting down any more conversation on the matter. "Sohalia, a young fairy, was injured on this property; it would behoove you to visit her and receive updates on her progress, both from an ethical and a legal standpoint. I assure you, remaining here would do nothing but impede our progress." A last snide grin and she turned her back to them. "We appreciate your cooperation."

With, all things considered, a remarkable lack of spectacle, Allison transformed back into her fairy form and was met halfway back to Cadenza and Grey by Laura. The two spoke quietly and, as Sabrina gestured towards the Winx girls, Laura shook her head frustratedly and held out her hand. A blast of light swirled around them and suddenly the world had exploded in color—greens, purples, reds, golds, bright colors and shades the likes of which the girls had never conceived of, much less ever _seen_. Everything swirled in a fabulous rainbow of fire, more magical than anything they had encountered, imagined, thought _possible_, and then—

Both just as suddenly but somehow hours later, the colors vanished and the girls looked at one another perplexedly. All at once, they sprinted off towards the infirmary—what had they been doing waiting around in a _field_ when a poor, brainwashed, injured young fairy was on the premises and in need of some authoritative adult supervision? Someone to tell her what was going on?

Moments later, they burst together into the infirmary wing, each looking around in different directions for poor Sohalia. A closed door clearly indicated her presence, faint pink and gold glows occasionally lighting up the gaps around the frame. Flora pushed forward, knocking gently before Musa had a chance to shove it open.

"We're sorry," Aisha blurted just as Tecna shoved ahead, wagging her PDA.

"What's the prognosis?" she asked over her friend as Musa tried to push her aside.

"She's okay, isn't she?"

Nurse Lorelei looked up at them, completely bewildered, as Bloom and Stella shoved past her to get to the door.

"What happened?" they demanded. "Cadenza was—"

"Sabrina said—"

"Did Grey say—"

"Why did Laura—"

Flora held up her hands in an uncharacteristically authoritative move. "Hold on," she said firmly. "Girls. We don't know much of anything beyond what you do. Allison said we were getting in Cadenza's way by staying, and so we…left?"

She glanced around at her companions; they were all slowed up by that point in Flora's story, suddenly bewildered. Why _had_ they left? It had suddenly seemed so obvious, so clearly the right, the _only_ thing to do.

Stella twisted her face into a displeased expression and nodded. "I don't even want to think about what that girl might've done if you hadn't," she said bitterly. "They're all so obnoxious, thinking they just know _everything_ about _everything_."

Musa and Aisha nodded, but Bloom shifted her weight uncomfortably and made a disagreeing noise. "Well, to be fair," she hedged, "they do know a lot more about what's going on than we do."

"Well, maybe so," Stella said, scandalized, "but they've been going about it entirely the wrong way.

Flora shrugged. "To be fair, we haven't exactly heeded their wishes at any point."

"Uh, _yeah_," Aisha cut in as if it was only the most obvious thing in the world. "Because 'their wishes' have been completely ridiculous and bound to get them _killed_. They want us to just go away? With all these people coming around and picking fights and stuff? We've all seen how dangerous they can all be, and we're supposed to just step out. Right, I don't think so."

"But," Tecna pointed out, "we've also seen how dangerous these three can be. When you think about it, it's not too unreasonable for them to want us out of the picture; they don't know us very well, I mean, and it's not too shocking to think that they would expect us to get in the way."

"Yeah," Flora said, nodding. "They've been fighting with Meadowsweet for awhile, of course they know what they're doing. It does make sense." Tecna shot Flora a half-grateful, half-perplexed gaze; the other girl didn't usually support plans that involved stepping back and doing nothing.

Nurse Lorelei stepped forward, nervously smoothing her white frock. As Stella opened her mouth to offer another argument, she cleared her throat pointedly; Bloom spun around, embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out, stepping between Stella and Musa. "Girls, Lorelei is ready to take off Sohalia's freeze…spell?" She looked at the nurse for confirmation and returned her smile halfheartedly. "We should be tending to that, don't you think?" Herding the others around and towards Sohalia's bed (still as a statue), she cut off any attempts at resistance and tried to make room for Nurse Lorelei at the front. The woman merely looked around at them, somewhat bewildered.

"Ladies," she said hesitantly, "I don't know what you thought, but I'll need this room to be _empty_ while I operate."

"What? No," Aisha said firmly, pounding her fist against the wall. "No, we're responsible for this girl, we have to be here."

Lorelei sighed, sagging a little where she stood. "Ladies," she started again, "I can certainly appreciate your desire to help this poor girl, but I assure you, this is _nothing like_ the operations usually performed at this infirmary. This girl needs _surgery_. Cleanliness is crucial, and to ensure the maximum sterilization the room must—"

"W-we'll go," Flora cut in, a little desperately. "Don't worry about it, we appreciate your coming out so quickly in the middle of the night like this."

"But Flora," Stella started to protest. The usually demure flower fairy shot her an insistent glance and gestured (not so subtly) towards the door; Bloom and Tecna left without protest, and even Musa spared only a passing glance over her shoulder at the frighteningly-still patient, but Aisha and Stella stubbornly refused to leave. Flora stood her ground as well, continuing to point (frustrated) towards the exit.

Aisha actually did leave with a petulant little huff, but Stella only widened her stance and folded her arms tightly over her chest. "No."

Flora lowered her arm dramatically and threw up her hands, her eyes creasing a little at the corners. "Stella, _why_?"

"That girl," Stella said, pointing with a flourish towards Sohalia's bed, "is from Solaria. She's one of my _subjects_, and I have a _responsibility_ to protect my _kingdom_."

"Is _that_ what this is about?" Bloom said tersely, appearing suddenly behind her friend. "Stella, you don't need to personally tend to every single person living on Solaria. You can't, it's impossible."

"So I should just let them _die_?" Stella said a little hysterically. Flora frowned uneasily, shifting her weight, and Bloom's eyes opened wider as she stepped around to Stella's front.

"Are you serious?" she asked. Stella just frowned down at her, creases in her forehead deepening. "You don't need to answer," Bloom continued (unnecessarily). "You…you're completely unfit to rule your kingdom if that's what you think it's all about. You need to be just, and fair, and—make good decisions, be smart, be strong, but you can't be everything to everyone. You just _can't_."

Stella bit her lip but recovered quickly. "You don't know," she said. "You don't know what you're talking about, you don't know what it's _like_."

"What _what's_ like?"

"Losing somebody you _love_!"

"You don't even _know_ her!"

"But somebody does!"

Bloom looked like she was about to slap Stella, but thought better of it at the last second. She shook her head, keeping her eyes locked with the other girl's. "You can't do it all," she said coldly, "and you're stupid to try." Turning on her heel, she left Flora to usher a shell-shocked Stella out of the room, ignoring the stunned gazes (glares) from the others as she moved straight out of the infirmary waiting area and into the hall.

Musa and Flora bracketed Stella as she fell to her knees, missing the couch, and just stared.


	21. I'm Tired of Losing Hope

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**i'm tired of losing hope  
**

Stella's actions had been fortunately constant for the past few minutes, at least—in a way, a relief (she wasn't flying off the handle), and in another, more important way, a huge frustration (she was numbly shaking her head and not-quite-crying). Musa and Flora stared at one another over her head, desperate but equally lost.

Although no one had asked her, Aisha shrugged, elbowing her way into the situation. "Grey has the power of Mirrors, doesn't she? Isn't that what Sohalia said before she was…fixed? Maybe that could help with some kind of reflection thing, like a friendship…thing?…"

"All those questions weren't exactly inspiring," Musa said frustratedly. Tecna pointedly avoided her sweeping gaze, keeping herself as far removed from the others as possible.

"Stella, honey?" Flora tried (again). The response was wholly unsurprising: Stella's eyes remained fixed on some invisible point in front of her and the tears continued to not quite fall. Flora made a huffing, irritated sound and rested her arms on her knees. "Maybe we should try to find Bloom," she said, addressing the others.

Stella's head suddenly stopped shaking and her eyes narrowed, glittering golden lines. "No," she said darkly. "Absolutely not." Out of her sight, Flora shrugged, staunchly defeated.

Tecna tapped her index finger rhythmically against the floor where she knelt, her brow furrowed in thought. "What about the fairies out there?" she said slowly. "Cadenza has the power of Silence—that wouldn't help anything in the long run, of course, just keeping them quiet wouldn't do a bit of good."

Musa nodded, putting one of her hands on Stella's back and the other on her own knees. "Yeah, you know, Sabrina has the power of Control, I think, right?"

"Same problem," Aisha said, shaking her head. "No good in the long run, I mean. What about Laura?"

"Clarity," Flora said with a note of revelation. "Clarity would be _perfect_."

"Yes," Tecna hedged, "but to be used on _who_?"

Flora frowned.

---

Laura folded her arms loosely across her chest and craned her neck up to watch Cadenza and Grey. She made a small sighing noise and Sabrina's eyes slid over to look at her.

"Well?"

Laura shook her head but didn't shift her gaze. "How long have you known Effie?"

Sabrina smiled and closed her eyes. "Eleven years. I haven't seen her in almost three, though."

Almost out of sight, Cadenza continued speaking, her arms moving almost violently in midair as she circled her prey. Laura lowered her head and looked at the ground. "She sounds really cool."

"She is. She's one of the smartest girls I know."

"She means a lot to Cadenza."

Sabrina looked squarely at Laura then, her eyes just slightly narrowed at the bottoms. She waited for the other girl to meet her gaze before speaking again.

"What is this really about?"

Laura shrugged, trying to look away, but Sabrina's piercing gaze wouldn't let her avoid the subject for long. "I… You know, I really don't know. I've just heard about her from you two for so long, and it never even—no one ever mentioned meeting her, or even _maybe_ meeting her, _someday_, it was like some awful thing had happened that I just wasn't allowed to know about." She waved vaguely up, towards Cadenza and Grey, and cleared her throat to goad herself on. "Something that had been this big, amazing part of your lives and then it just _ended_ and I wasn't allowed to know _why_, and I felt like I was just a…a really bad, really insufficient replacement for something but I had no idea _what_." She glanced up, barely noticeable, and shrugged again. "Or _who_."

The lingering effects of Sabrina's control were wearing off, but Grey remained up in the air as Cadenza flew slowly around her, miming something over and over; Laura shook her head, long threads of dark brown hair waving in front of her face. "Never mind, I never really—I. I'm sorry. I've never had friends like you two, I'm not used to, I guess sharing without it really being me getting dumped."

Sabrina turned to look back up at Grey and Cadenza. "It's okay."

"Oh my god, Allie!"

Sabrina's and Laura's eyes locked on the new offender at once. Sabrina hissed (like a cat) as Laura growled (like a dog).

"Lenox."

"Wow, so you _do_ remember me."

An altogether unremarkable young witch sauntered up to Sabrina, wagging her finger as she walked. Laura's eyes darted between them as her hands twitched nervously; she hadn't quite been prepared for another battle so soon.

"You've taken something very precious to us," Lenox reprimanded, her features twisting strangely and becoming somehow similar to Sabrina's. "And we want it back."

"We thought you might," Sabrina returned. "Where's your boy toy?"

Lenox's features relaxed again and she gave a lopsided grin; her face was one of those plain ones, unattractive on its own but with a malleable quality to it that could mimic the characteristics of other, more defined faces with little effort. She whistled, sharp and low, and a similar-looking wizard appeared beside her (out of thin air).

"What are you calling yourself nowadays?" he asked by way of introduction. "Was 'Elle' the last I heard? Or, no." He rapped his knuckles on his own head a couple of times. "That was your friend, wasn't it, the little thing from Videlicet."

Laura's gaze turned to Sabrina sharply, then immediately back to the wizard. He grinned, self-satisfied.

"Ah, I see I've struck a chord with some of our…lesser members," he teased.

"Axel," Sabrina said by way of introduction. "You'll never get your hands on her, you should just get out now." She snarled and Lenox mimicked her (by reflex). "She's back to normal anyway."

"Who, Grey?" Lenox asked, mock-curious. "Noooo, I don't think she is."

"If she was," Axel continued without missing a beat, "she'd be down here defending you, defending _herself_, against _us_."

"She might as well be," Laura cut in, ignoring Sabrina's startled flinch. "You'll never get her back."

Lenox tapped her forehead with a long, manicured fingernail. "Oh, that's right, I forgot. The power of friendship, right?"

Axel nodded. "You've got your little miracle worker up there with her right now, don't you, bringing her back. Is that it?"

"Bullshit," Sabrina muttered coldly. "Why do you even _want_ her? Do you even know what she can do? What her power is, what magic she controls?"

"No," Axel said breezily.

"We don't really care," Lenox added. "She's important to you, that's enough for us."

"And we think you already figured that much out," Axel said, wrinkling his nose, "which is why we don't mind confirming it. You're not stupid."

"Well," Lenox confided, "not all the time."

Bloom chose precisely that moment to storm onto the scene, blazing in all her battle glory with Dragon fire flaring around her hands and in her eyes.

"Back off," she threatened, "if you know what's good for you."

Lenox and Axel exchanged a somewhat perplexed glance. "Well, well," the witch said with a grin. "Isn't this a treat of a surprise."

"Get out of here, Bloom," Sabrina muttered. The fire fairy stood her ground proudly, muscles tensed, and shook her head; Laura tensed further, apparently trying to refrain from shoving the other girl out of the way.

Over Axel's shoulder, Cadenza landed on the ground with Grey (Effie) lying unconscious in her arms. Bloom stiffened obviously (almost gasping) and Lenox looked back with a wry grin.

"I see," she said silkily. "Well. This _is_ getting good."


	22. We Don't Want to Be Like You

**this is how it starts (ready set go)**

**we don't want to be like you  
**

"You stay away from them!" Bloom shouted coarsely, her stance tensing even further. She pointed a blazing hand at Lenox, whose eyes were focused on her, and bared her teeth. "No fighting at _my_ school!"

Axel and Lenox exchanged a quick glance and the former shrugged. "I think we can live with that," he said wryly. Lenox nodded. They both vanished.

"Goddamnit!" Sabrina stamped her foot down, hard, and Laura jumped. The fire around Bloom's hands blazed higher and she looked around frantically (deer in the headlights). Five meters away, Cadenza looked up with tired eyes, falling to her knees and cradling Effie's head in her arms. She shook her head and slumped down, moving one of her arms to brace herself on the ground and adjusting Effie's head against her chest.

Bloom spun wildly to face Sabrina. "Where did they go?" she demanded. "We've got to find them, c'mon!"

Laura put her hand out (to cast a spell) (to placate Bloom) (to shut her up), but Sabrina got to her first. Her firmly controlled mask firmly back in place, she narrowed her eyes and thinned her lips to a firm line. "We can't find them," she said icily. "They cannot be found. They are untraceable." She sighed a trembling, bitter sigh. "That is their power. The _ultimate_ in invisibility."

"That can't be," Bloom insisted. "Anyone can be traced with the proper tools; we just need to—"

"Are you ignorant or just stupid?" Sabrina interrupted. "Their _power_. Their _domain_. Their _specialty_ is being _impossible_ to find. They could be standing right beside you right this second, and you wouldn't have the slightest idea."

A thin red aura glowed into being around Bloom's body as her eyes darted around irrationally. Laura rolled her eyes. "They're _not_," she said dully. "They said they were leaving, didn't you hear?"

Sabrina crooked her finger in her friend's direction and stepped towards Cadenza and Effie. "We have to go."

Laura nodded and followed immediately, leaving Bloom to glow in frustrated silence behind them. As she stared around, flustered, the four fairies shot up into the air with uncanny speed—Sabrina carrying Effie and Laura cradling Cadenza—and disappeared.

---

"Bloom!" Flora called, sounding unbelievably relieved and slightly out of breath. "Thank goodness, we've been looking all over for you!"

Bloom jerked her head up (away from the ground) and stared at Flora, Aisha, and Tecna sprinting towards her. The dim glow around her skin had long since faded and she had transformed back into her regular clothes (how long had she been standing there), but she still wasn't quite sure what was going on or where the other fairies had disappeared to.

"Where's Stella?" she asked with a mix of trepidation and earnestness. Tecna fell back slightly, nervous, and Aisha stopped completely, her hip thrust out to brace her fist. Flora looked over at them awkwardly and rolled her shoulder.

"She's…not in the mood to talk right now," Flora said neutrally. "We were wondering if _you_ were okay."

Bloom looked away, her eyes lowered again. "Where did Laura go?" Aisha asked after a beat.

Rather than admit to what had gone on last night, Bloom didn't answer; Flora looked between them knowingly and shook her head with a small (small) smile. "We'll find them."

"We don't know who she _is_," Tecna put in. Aisha shushed her sternly and she shrugged.

"But we _do_ know Allison," Flora said, clearly trying to stay positive. "I know she hasn't been…forthcoming, exactly, in the past, but this is different. We don't even need to know who she is, we just need to speak to her in her fairy form; they might be willing to help!"

"Doubt it," Bloom said sullenly. Flora's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed as she drummed her fingers thoughtfully against her chin.

"What happened here last night?" she asked finally. Bloom winced.

Aisha walked forward, stopping between Flora and Bloom in a fortunately non-confrontational position. She looked at Bloom with suspicious eyes and bent over slightly. "Someone showed up, didn't they?" she guessed. "Someone was here, and you were—all of you were fighting." Bloom's silence urged her on and her voice became slightly panicked (she didn't know why). "Did something happen to Grey?"

"Cadenza calls her 'Effie,' and—" Bloom shrugged awkwardly. "She—she was badly injured. I think. I _don't know_."

Flora stepped in at once, edging in front of Aisha and laying her hands on Bloom's shoulders. "Hey, it's all right," she said firmly. "Bloom, just tell us what happened."

Tecna pulled out her PDA and began scanning the—grass? (Not the sky.)

Bloom took a shuddering breath and looked away; when she spoke, her tone was stilted. "Cadenza flew around Effie, saying things and making some gestures—it looked like she was doing some spell, something complicated. I didn't recognize it, but it had a lot of repetition, over and over. But—before she was done with that, a witch and a wizard came, out of nowhere; that was when I got here, right after them. Sabrina said their power was invisibility, or something like that, that they couldn't be found. She said they might be standing right next to me and I wouldn't know."

Her pause was obviously drawn-out, and Tecna nudged her PDA in a circle around her; traces of the red glow resurfaced in its wake and Tecna blinked perplexedly, tapping buttons. She made a "hum" noise that seemed to jerk Bloom out of her trance and she continued.

"I said that was impossible." Her voice cracked slightly but her expression remained stoic. "Sabrina said I was stupid; their power is this untraceable…thing, that's what they rule over. Their domain. She and Laura carried Cadenza and Effie away, they just left." She made a sweeping gesture with her left arm. "Flew off."

Tecna's PDA began to blink bright yellow and she waved it slightly. "We need to find one of them," she said, matter-of-factly. "There's a trail, I think, or some kind of…something, leading this way." She pointed in a vague arc, waving her fingers. "It won't last too long; I'm impressed it's still around, honestly, although that might be because this area has been so still since they left. Anyway."

"Let's go!" Aisha said eagerly, transforming suddenly and hovering a few inches off the ground. Flora couldn't help a small smile as she transformed as well, floating beside her friend. Tecna nodded and started to transform as well, stopping when she noticed Bloom's continued catatonia.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked, waving her PDA again (like temptation). Bloom looked up and shrugged.

"I guess."

"_Ha_," Aisha said coolly, twirling as Tecna took the lead, her PDA pointed ahead. "Laura, we've got you now."


End file.
